Witterings

Years ago on a dirt road in orchard country
a farmhouse burned to the cellar-stones.
That night I stood with the other fruit-pickers
watching flames roll and thunder down the walls.

The next day we found near the ruin,
still warm, a tree hung with baked apples. And so,
after a night too close to the fire, a poet
may hold something delicious in a scorched hand.

--Thomas R Smith