Burning Need Burning Itself to Extinction

Some things cannot be said about the daughter.
       The words would harm, and the river

              would run deep with all the weeping.

The black river, so aptly named.
       From the hillside in winter, it looks more

              like a fallen tree, black with wet, branching.

Betrayals, failures, why must such things be named.
       No doubt you would like the details.

              The devil is there, and the good stuff, the juicy stuff,

the stuff you would remember longer
       than the winter landscape, the black river,

              the heart beating beating oxygen through the body.

But if, on a winter’s night, you happen to look up
       and see not stars in their constellations

              but fires burning in the night, think then of the woman

watching out her window, wanting the past
       to be hers again, then stopping at a single star—Venus,

              or Mars—and making the inevitable

comparison: body of fire, body of bone
       and flesh and blood: and hearing her heart quiet

              as it will when she finally lets go.

Lynne Knight | Contents
Mudlark Chap No. 66 (2018)