Natural Hazards

Should I tell you now about the fire? Neither one of us could sleep
so we climbed onto the roof in the dark.
                            The black sky muttered and glowed,

dripping sweat like a feverish child. Should I tell you about the smoke,
how it crept like love through me? I think you must already know.
             In the morning

our house was still there. All night pale ash had fallen: it covered the pine tree,
the Honda, the old railing where you and I went outside to see.
                                   On top of it

lay part of a bird: gray feathers and bone, some charred meat holding them together.
You asked me what it was, and I said it’s nothing,
                        and brushed it away.

Today I wondered if you believed me. We were coughing, the wind curling,
pulling warm ashes down from the clouds,
                                                                      ash catching in your hair. 

The news said two people died, and seven horses. You and I lost nothing.
           The rest                       

became for me a kind of secret, and for months I dreamed about the horses,
their sweet straw smell and
                                     the way they might have screamed.