Origin Story

^{“What is dying is the willingness to be in denial.”
            —angel Kyodo williams}

The heron flew away 
and I wanted to tell someone   

how long it stayed,  
how close I got, 

how much I missed it
even as it stood

to watch me, 
large-eyed animal

that I am, terrible 
at believing what I can’t see.

You see fire in the home
where we live: the world

in cardiac arrest.
A heart attack

is not the onset I want to say
to someone, it’s the flare.

It illuminates what’s already here:
the forests

illuminated, the earth
lit as an origin story.

Here you are, 
I say instead, 

aloud, surprised
at how close 

I’ve been holding you
in the dark.

Flame yields 
no new landscape.

It bares the contours 
like a map

so we can see
where we’ve been all along, 

can see one another 
as we walk, and say,

for once, nothing 
at the fire’s steady flight, 

like a heron 
lifting in loud beats, 

our silent mouths open   
as if to give it a tunnel.