Keeper

The Fire Road

69 The Fire Road Some pinecones need flame to open. Only heat cracks loose their tongues, lets the tree seed itself, repeat green syllables across one field and the next. In woods along the fire road this morning: branch, vine, tangle of your hair, vein of leaf and hand. Saplings strung between boulders and stumps—no telling which will live. I planted two roses, side by side in equal light, but by summer only one. . . . And that lost wallet: how my dumb hands dredged my bag, lifting aspirin bottle, keys, everything but what I needed. So often it’s easier not to talk or touch, not to see pigeons rising 70 from the barn roof, all one body in a shout of wings. But then we bake gingerbread together, and what my body can’t do without: cinnamon, vanilla and honey, heat opening the cells, the tongues of pity and plenty. It enters every crack, every thirsty blinded space: whatever it is makes pigeons lift together, awkward and sure, makes salmon press upriver, milkweed spill its inside silk, saying nobody loves you, nobody loves you like I do. ...