And somewhere smoke unrolls like a pine needle, unspooling

from a red oak root clutching unhatched larvae,

from the powder of the failed chimney chinking,

from the fallen petals of cinquefoil and cross-vine,

a smoke that repeats the story:

Once there was a heron that spread her wings

to the edge of Kentucky where she dragged her feathertips

along fence planks and doorway eaves, on every toe

and dirt-wrinkled sole of each foot on each white ash floor.

When the earth opened, she crawled into the hole of its

mouth

and flew away with seventeen men on each wing

and left a rock that sank on their tongues,

their hands in the limestone soil heavy as wellwater,

their voices grain between two millstones.

Their home a crow’s nest of barbed wire.