I’m not sure exactly when the forest turned
into a burning cathedral, but I have seen the animals inside it
release to the sky like a soul leaving a body. I wore
a paper bag over my face
to their unofficial funeral—something
to hyperventilate into, to remind myself
I still have lungs beneath the heat, beneath corona,
inside the chokehold
of law enforcement gone awry.

I walk into what’s burning
and burn myself with it—

because every time I listen to the news,
there’s another story to bandage,
another tragedy to bury.

And I can’t plant fast enough:
the trees in my yard, the heart
in my garden,
the words that could be a conduit
for some lone moment of grace. I can’t plant
fast enough to make up for what is lost
in a year, a decade, a lifetime
when no one can breathe.

At the edge of compassion, I circle and look
for a trail. I resuscitate a memory
of who we were before we caused this.
I study it all, study
nothing, study life and death
and the enclosure
of an atmosphere-less
world. I recall a human who is part
of nature, not lord of it,
and I step in, step into the thicket

like a deer

before the first hunter
was born.