Because there's no snow here

And the trees still have their leaves

There is a tree on fire in the middle of the park:
tomorrow the sun will come up on its charcoal branches,

still ablaze.

Every day the two compete:
the sun gamely shows its best

with the spectacle of blood-soaked rise and set

before lying down each night in defeat.

(Does this reliability render the sight blasé-
a vulgarity in the distance it will travel to please?
Anyway, it’s near impossible to compete
with the visceral immediacy of live flame not 500 meters away.

Or does excitement lie in expecting to, one day
find ash in the place of wood-
revelling in the delightful dissonance
of seeing flame upon making one's approach.)

You’d have thought after a week or two of constant combustion
there’d be nothing left to nourish flame.
But the branches still are burning
and the sparks are spreading, turning

surrounding treetops into matchsticks continually ablaze.

(Like that city - what was its name?
The one whose cyclical burning
greeted each new arrival with flame.

Not that site of biblical churning,

but scorched earth for hedonistic yearning

of those who stayed until the sky collapsed,
then deciding their course had run
left a charred metropolis in their past.)

Each week I expect that by the next

the park green will be wholly replaced by primal red
the allure of which brings me back each day.
I had first come intent to draw,

packed with a fine set of supplies my father had bought.

But seeing the others with their charcoal and pens
and paper and fine slender fingers
I absorbed my tools back into my mind.

Tomorrow, I think, in the morning--
the light from the combustion
will filter the rising sky behind it
and how beautiful it will be!

Tomorrow, I say, and with a detached look
reach into my abdomen and retrieve a book--
I believe November’s born in fire.