Beth Copeland: Pyre

When I return to the cabin, our dog runs to greet me.
Separated for nine months—long enough to bring new life
into the world—I pat his head but don’t hug you. I don’t want you

to move to the mountains, you say. Let’s take a walk. But halfway
to the road, I notice dead branches on the dogwoods and stop
to snap them. You break the bigger boughs until there’s a gap

through the thicket. Then we move to the pines, breaking brittle
limbs with dry, brown needles, our hands sticky with sap. Our dog
is bored with us and retreats to the porch while we labor until it’s too

hot to continue. Enough wood for a bonfire, I say, recalling the night
we torched a dead Christmas tree, drinking white wine and dancing
around the leaping blaze and the dark morning I burned your love

letters in a metal trash can outside, drunk and weeping, liar! liar!
liar! as your false words folded into flames. You laugh, crack the last
branch from the trunk, and say, You always loved playing with fire.

~~~~

Copyright 2022 Beth Copeland. From Selfie with Cherry (Glass Lyre Press, 2022). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.

Beth Copeland is the author of Shibori Blue: Thirty-six Views of The Peak (Redhawk Publications, 2024): Selfie with Cherry (Glass Lyre Press, 2022); Blue Honey, 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize winner; Transcendental Telemarketer (BlazeVOX, 2012); and Traveling through Glass, 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award winner. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.