Fire (for Jason Hatfield)

The world knows I love you, or at least, it will now,
and I hold dear what our time taught: a boy and a girl
can be friends and nothing more (although, to be fair,
the rest of my life has revealed the rarity of this).
There are things I know that you only know, with me,
and when I've feared for you, I've feared for myself,
believing my horse lives on, someway, in your head,
along with the girl who rode her. And I love that girl:
look back and see my thundering from innocence,
losing control, crossing every line (just never with you).
I needed reigning in, but that was never your deal;
you would've vouched for me no matter my tragic truth.

Today, I remembered the burnt forest (Can you hear my
telling it in a whisper?) and how quietly we rode there.
I don't know why we rode there; it was bare and charred,
ugly, wanting. What was it? What was it? What. Was. It?
Fascination with post-destruction, maybe, and maybe
we learned what we learned there against this very day.
The fire does not take it all. Most of what a thing is
lives under the surface and cannot be burnt away and up.
Even if, say, the fire kills a man, his soul will take flight,
settle in the light of another place. We live in this truth,
you and I; we'll never die. The burnt forest isn't. Burnt.
(It's a forest, still.) Birds sing, trees whisper, of us there.

**Linking at the Poetry Jam. Visit to read more offerings on "fire."