Rasped leaf past scarp
scrapes over valley.
A yellow serum’s harrowed

arrows leap
at every aspen shiver.
Each tree is fated

to become strike
paper: all facts,
a river—

the logging roads
divide
the hills as hills

catch fire, fire lashes
each least
flash-scratch-scissor-seizure

to bedizen a matchbook’s
patch-
work spilled through this couloir.

Late wither-wizened world!
November’s
colder weather

augurs winter, like the coloratura
of a torch
song’s long-gasped embers.

Down gulch the ash of wild
-fires usher
stains through each failed vein—

& now the field’s sun-
gashed macrame is
all one gone-gold gown.