How Soon We Are Cinders Poem by Patti Masterman

Even if his single, weeping eye
Could still shout with a hoarse, salient fury,
Could stab as swiftly and as deep
As flames can lick a still living tree,
And the slender branches withering there,
Each glowing with it’s own tongue of fire.

Though that eye pierce me completely
Through to the other side,
And hold me in its stiffening fascination
Against the claustrophobic seam of the wall,
It would already be too late;

Already I should have squeezed out
My million or so after-births of words, by then
Lying quietly, in branching pools of splendor
Beneath a smoking, once verdant forest.