FIRELINE

My grandfather burned
fields as a boy, starving
wildfires before they tore

into the village. His face,
smoke-smudged, glows
at me in sepia. He knew

fire & witness is a kind
of flame. After his mother
died, he ashed her photographs,

paper wings fluttering
in a cigar box & now he can’t
remember her likeness. I wish

I could have told him
not all reckonings are soot—
the torched city soldiers

crunched through, snowmelt
on scorched crops. I’d say
we are also known by living

things, thinking of the tree
a crashed bike grew into, seeds
nourished by flash fires,

smooth, righteous nuts
shining through soil. Of family
he planted in a foreign land,

wild bouquets we picked
for him as children, fingers raw
with pollen. Willowherb, fire

poppy, pheasant’s eye:
from his face, we never
thought of them as weeds.