Another night of bluster, another tree
wrenched from the bank, branches raking the creek,
gathering leaves to staunch the current like a wad of gauze,
the world a wound, vultures swimming languid circles
over the mountains, peering down at the wreckage.
We were lucky, Helene swelled the creek but
spared the house mere weeks before we called it home.
Still, we moved into aftermath, loosed roots, trees
swooning like heart-sick fools, stumbling wind-drunk
into the water, cracking like gunshots against the rock.
I know what they say about broken things,
that cracks are how the light gets in, but
to the West, the light is galloping mustang-wild
over the hills, snapping trees like spent matches,
grinding homes to ash beneath its hooves—
all cracks, all light. I’m sorry if I was meant to see hope
in metaphor, clinging fast like the dregs of
some mythical box. But the deadfall has made a veil
of its ragged branches, and over the Pacific, the smoke
drifts low, wings spread like a scavenging bird.
Zoe Boyer was raised on the shore of Lake Michigan. She completed her MA in creative writing among the ponderosas in northern Arizona, and now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Five Points, The Penn Review, Terrain.org, Pleiades, Poetry South, Little Patuxent Review, RockPaperPoem, Radar Poetry, and Grain Magazine, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as a finalist for Best of the Net.
