Last Night We Lit a Bonfire

I cannot stop considering the geese 
honking to one another across the 
icy pond, the snapper estivating 
below the mud in a darkness blacker 
than sleep, soon to come around according 
to some inner or outer signal that 
lets him know the axis of the world has 
tipped enough to bring him back to life. Last 
night we lit a bonfire, ridding ourselves 
of the kind of scraps you can burn when
you’ve renovated an old bathroom: left 
over blocks of pine studs, enough to get 
the damp limb of the Norway maple lit 
so we could feed it to the flames all night
long with the smaller branches and fat twigs 
that gave up in the wind storm which took two 
of our slates last week. This might be the last 
coat I ever buy, you mused, sitting with 
your boots propped on the rocks of our fire ring,
thinking of your father’s brown tweed hunting 
jacket hanging in our closet, the one 
you sometimes wear and which outlasted him. 

Sandra Kolankiewicz writes: “My poems have appeared widely, most recently in One, Otis Nebulae, Trampset, Concho River Review, London Magazine, New World Writing and Appalachian Heritage. Turning Inside Out was published by Black Lawrence. Finishing Line has released The Way You Will Go and Lost in Transition."