From downwind the vultureous crop
fire is nothing like the smoke of cities.
This moves less cautiously, less Gary
Kasparov and it can leap to encircle
in splits. Travel cows and house cars
in the upwind, the sidewind directions.
Yes the orchard is gone. And the thief.
The white chickens, the whole merry month
from the air. Some mornings the dawn
negates the show. The flames leave
little trail, just cattail tips above the corn,
the young christmas trees, the dry grasses.
Trace lines like those that atoms leave,
or electrons, or quarks. The pumping well
is a nice place to dive for cover if you know
the depth and the inhabitants and the stamina
to climb out. Water hasn't been pumped for years.
It may be dried up, it may be pig bones. Jaws?
The water comes from a plant in Center City.
Where it comes from before there is as good
a guess as any. Nano-organisms live in fresh
water and nano-death squads are injected in fresh
water in Center City with the purpose of extermination.
When the job is done, and done complete,
they exterminate themselves until there is one.
One part per million gallons of water through the plant.
Enough to make the pigs sick, eventually. Enough.
But for the most part, harmless. And better than cholera.
There was a breakout of cholera once in this house.
This house, the neighbors house, the swine house,
inside the individual germs of wheat, plotting an invasion.
A return to glory as it was in the stew of prehistory.
The hosts died. The little, the big, the avian, animalae,
the blankets, the protean, the pillows, stuffed rabbits,
the barn, the chopped wood, salted cayotes, the air.
It was a conflagration. It burned like sulfur smells.
It burns every seven years, a buddhist monk living his lifecycle.
Prairie. For you, anything. For you love and disaster and summer rain.
Call you fired lungs? Kiln bottom broken? Restitute?
The land of funnels is also accepted nomenclature.