collapses and the corporeal flames

flicker long into the evening,

when wind collects bits of ash and makes

the tips of the blackened fields glow. She

will arrive soon, intemperate and

invisible, to inter her breath

within the broken houses of men.

She has been present since words and myths

were realized, and gods were conceived

to enforce them, holding the courses

of temple and water, steadying

the trees as they gripped the shifting earth

with their knotted hands. She was at rest

in the white sails of man’s first conquest.