Poem: After the Burn by Maureen Ash

After the Burn

We walk around the field we burned,
grass growing back so tender and green,
and it’s like a new addition to the house
freshly dry-walled and painted, so roomy now
and lighter, more airy, the horizon made sharp.

Fire scoured it down to where we can see
how the land wasn’t built so much as rubbed away–
we knew that, we knew that–but now it’s so clearly
more of an ocean, swelling and falling
under its wind-licked surface
over which we walk like gods, winding up wire
and pulling out posts, fishermen
hauling up our nets, 
catching birdsong, mostly, and sky
and this wide, rippling green.

Maureen Ash