Poems by Maura High
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Dormant Season Controlled Burn, Calloway Forest
(after Chuang Tzu)
by Maura High
Maura was born in Wales and now lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina, an area of low hills and uncertain drainage patterns in the same Cape Fear watershed as the Calloway Forest of this poem.
What more can be said about fire:
that it nibbles up the grass stalks,
and rips through the cane and tangle in the seep.
That is how the fire passes on.
All day I thought about nothing
but how much fire
to drop, or water, and how.
How fast to step through the slash, how far,
dipping the torch left or right.
Spot, spike, line, ring.
Whether to get out of the cab
and stamp out the flame sputtering
in the grassy track.
Wiregrass, scrub oak, longleaf
in grass stage, burned down; scorched
pinecones, ash and char.
This is how fire passes on.
Through the layers of soil, the deep roots,
and seed shells cracked open,
into sprout, and shoot, and green.
© Maura High