What the Ash Doesn't Mention

The neighbor is burning the brush in the back,

and the smoke is a thin, gray, winding track.

I watch from the porch as a chair leg turns red,

a skeleton glowing before it is dead.

The heat makes the air above the fence start to bend,

like a distorted window that’s coming to an end.

You can’t take back the spark once the wood starts to go,

or stop the white flakes from beginning to blow.

It’s a quiet destruction, a shifting of weight,

leaving nothing behind but a heavy, charred state.

We spend all our time trying to build something tall,

then watch how the embers can finish it all.