It had been six weeks since the wildfires
\nand already he\u2019d stopped remembering.\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
Mansions collapsed every day
\nand the old man tried to measure distances, echoes. <\/p>\n
He sawed through cedar posts and strung wire taut\u2212
\na way to catch skeletons.<\/p>\n
His wife sang a harrowing song to antlions. <\/p>\n
Oh this world is not my home<\/p>\n
Her reedy voice carried over beds of ash. <\/p>\n
A watercolor sun touched the horizon.<\/p>\n
He also played solitaire
\nin an RV hidden by gray snowdrifts,
\ntalking to people who weren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
There\u2019d never been a blizzard like that in Disappointment, Kentucky. <\/p>\n
He watched gasmasks emerge over a hill
\nand wondered what language they spoke. <\/p>\n
They looked like ancient divers skulking across an ocean floor.
\nThey moved northwest towards town.<\/p>\n
Through the smoke he traced them,<\/p>\n
stick figures dragging across a frozen surface,
\ndisappearing into soot-colored tree line.<\/p>\n
A yellow pediment pointed at the sky.
\nStarlings fell with folded wings
\nand reminded the old man of long ago banquet birds. <\/p>\n
He\u2019d recited a psalm in the burned-out chapel
\nand the words \u201cvalley of the shadow\u2026\u201d repeated in his mind. <\/p>\n
If I live through winter, he thought, I\u2019ll find a good spot to fish. <\/p>\n
Old women carrying censers exited a cemetery.
\nThey looked like slow chrysanthemum fireworks. <\/p>\n
The world was addicted to that kind of exodus. <\/p>\n
People sometimes hoped the mountains would cave in<\/p>\n
and then felt dumb betting against mountains.<\/p>\n
It had been six weeks since the wildfires and already he\u2019d stopped remembering. Mansions collapsed every day and the old man tried to measure distances, echoes. He sawed through cedar posts and strung wire taut\u2212 a way to catch skeletons. His wife sang a harrowing song to antlions. Oh this world is not my home Her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-1JA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10091,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6670\/revisions\/10091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}