Four Portraits of Fire

1 I find a strange knowledge of wind, an open door in the mountain pass where everything intersects. Believe me. This will not pass. This is a world where flags contain themselves, and are still, marked by their unfurled edges. Lean stuff sways on the boughs of pitch pine: silver, almost tinsel, all light gone blue and sprouting orange oils in a last bouquet. 2 These were the nest builders; I caught one last morning, I sang so it fell down, stupid, from the trees. They’re so incorrect in their dead skin. Witness their twig feet, the mistake of their hands. They will follow you. They yearn pebbles for their gullets to grind their own seed. They swallow so selflessly and die like patriots. 3 Last Christmas, a family of five woke from their dreaming and dreamed themselves over: the baby in its pink pajamas, the boy in the red flannel bathrobe he grabbed from the door, a mother, a father, and a sister in curlers; all died. A wood frame house, a cannister of oil, a match—watch as it unsettles. They were so cold; umber. 4 I am away from the knowledge of animal mystics, brujas and sorcerers or the nudging chants of a Tlingit Kachina. I am frightened by regions with wills of their own, but when my people die in the snow I wonder did the depths billow up to reach them?