These poems from the Stone Circle archive explore fire any at three very different scales. Ash falls from the air and covers the trees, a beachcomber cranks the radio and mourns, and a wedding dress becomes a beacon.

After the Fires

by Lynne Ellis

They thought
the orange moon could sing
their travel story—they’d driven clasp-handed

across the burning hills, as smoking trees stood
still by the highway side.

Live Inside the Burn

by Edie Meade

No one wanted this. I wish we could repay the pipers with beach. Still,
container ships, quilted like shanty towns, wash to blue in the distance
and the shells look like Lee Press-Ons lost in struggle. A gorgeous crime scene.

To the Woman Whose Charred Wedding Dress I Found in a Sandy Ravine

by Paula Brown

The sun this morning found a hem of beads somewhere beneath white satin.
What was left after the smoldering: a jeweled bodice, seared tufts of desert grass.

Don’t stop there…

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