Fire curled in wild abandon
From a dense brush pile.
Vein-like webs collapsed
or exploded in quick bursts,
lighting up the highest branches
of the gnarled sycamore,
eyes of a squirrel
red above the rim of its nest,
dark shadow of a rabbit
escaping into dense grass.
Hairs on my father’s knuckle
collapsed into flames
on the surface of skin,
charred, calloused ground.

And then he saw it,
he tells me as we sit on the porch,
his eyes still vaguely bloodshot,
wisps of invisible smoke
wafting from his flannel shirt,
skin of his hand hairless and shiny--

a field mouse approaching the edges
of that blackened circle of ashes,
hesitating just for a moment
and then vanishing into the flames,
to the spot where her babies lay
then no more than cinders and smoke.

“Do you believe that could happen?”
my father asks in a quiet voice,
fingering the edge of his coffee cup,
his face just for a moment
blurred and hazy around the edges
as if consumed by a curtain of smoke.

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Thomas Reynolds received an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University, currently serves as an English professor at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and has published poems in numerous print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon-The Journal of Sport Literature, Midwest Poetry Review, Ash Canyon Review, The Pedestal Magazine, American Western Magazine, Combat, and 3rd Muse Poetry Journal. His first full-length poetry collection titled Ghost Town Almanac is scheduled for publication in January of 2008 by Woodley Memorial Press of Washburn University of Topeka.