10,000 Acres Burned
It is not only the arrow that delivers sorrow.
Walking alone through the storm-blown
after a dinner crowded with voices can be
its own devastation. Or a wild mustang asleep
in the knapweed, which is one invasive asleep
in the arms of another. This after the smell
of gasoline and finding scattered on the path
blossoms like the little yellow shells of pistachios.
I’m astonished when the moon holds its wink
all dawn, even through the smoke from the neighbors
who woke early to burn their trash. It’s something
like the opposite of the birds whose song’s absence
made the season transparent and thin for me
without my ever knowing it. Or the arrow—which is
the sorrow—piercing the silence of this sudden loss.
Copyright © 2025 by Keetje Kuipers. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 5, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“As we find a way to live with the new normal of climate change, I want to write the lament that does not so much mourn our planet or chastise humanity (both impulses regularly possess me), but that, instead, is the kind of song of reluctant acceptance you might hum to yourself at the end of a relationship that couldn’t last. I don’t want to give up on our world—just as I don’t want to give up on love—but I believe we need to recognize [that] our particular kind of time with it has come to an end.”
—Keetje Kuipers