Smoke arrived late this year, giving
the Douglas firs a reprieve,
letting the squirrels ravage
their cones. The eagle’s nests stayed
whole while nitrogen passed
like holy wine through
fir tree roots to red alders
and back in mutual infusion.
But neither our once famous rain,
nor a benevolent god kept
scorching fires at bay.
Ah Nature, you trickster,
I am a gullible novice: blind
mole to the web
of complexity, forgetting
the many years of drought,
the yellow jackets swarming
last August, thirsty.
And though I flew
from France over the glaciers
of Iceland and Mt. Rainier
to reach my lover—every sheet
and floe receding—
my weeping brought nothing
to our melting planet.
Yet it’s the salt,
the slick
and thrum and heat
of our bodies that keeps
our channels open.
—
Suzanne Edison’s book, Since the House Is Burning, by MoonPath Press was published in 2022. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Her poetry can be found in The Missouri Review, SWWIM, Solstice Literary Magazine, RockPaperPoem, Whale Road Review, Lily Poetry Review, JAMA, and elsewhere. She teaches expressive writing to caregivers through UCSF Wellness Center for Youth with Chronic Conditions and lives in Seattle.
