Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

Fire  
Ron Mohring

with a line from Yeats.

Because a fire was in my head. Because a hawk
had built its nest high in my favorite beech.
Because twenty years. Because I had to know
if it was there. Because I need to sing,
although I cannot sing. Because
I could not leave such things alone.
Because I gather seeds and burrs, rose hips
I vaguely think I’ll plant. Because bits
of moss. Because the ferns shone green
in rising coils. Because death. Because time.
Because I had carved nothing
into the smooth gray trunk. The way
seemed smaller now. The knuckled pale
Mayapples rose in unison. The leaf litter
rustled and stirred. Because the muddy shell
looked like a stone until it moved again:
unburying itself, the turtle heaved
its house-box from the hole. Because I spend
my days asleep. Because the nest was gone.
Because the woods aren’t mine. Small
violets, leaf  edges curled like scrolls,
flexed into the light. I knew
their blossoms would be small and yellow;
knew where to find the bladder fern,
the trout lily and wild phlox, the cardinal
flower which would not bloom till summer.
Because I picked the turtle up and saw
the perfect nostrils drilled into its beak.
Its gold-flecked eyes regarded me. I could
have been a bear, a dog. A hawk. A silk
of milkweed fluff. Because what came next
into my mind, a thought full-blown, did not
belong to me: I carry my house, it said, but
my home is sacred, too. And then I knew.

Ron Mohring’s poetry collection, Survivable World, won the 2003 Washington Prize. He lives in central Pennsylvania, where he manages Seven Kitchens Press.