Land Owners
push
severed limbs into the ground,
anchored in boluses of concrete.
one person
buying
another.
one person
grades
into the breast of a hill.
downstream,
cataracts of silt:
a kind of preventable blindness.
There are all sorts of responses to being held captive:
death.
sense less ness.
rebellion.
The forehead of the fire
leans
into drywall paper
unveils
the pale, chalky gut of gypsum.
I feel certain
that this fire
did not stop to check in at the courthouse,
or request a title report from a title company.
This fire
doesn’t rate the generations of land owners
as a significant
detail.
Nor did Krakatoa
Katrina
Sandy
or the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
consider
the history of human habitation
or the history
of buying
and selling
souls.
This article appears in Meet Dan Johnson.