After Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions
And the Turtle replied:
I saw my mother burn
in a forest fire
birthed by the flick of a cigarette.
I tried to reason with Fire
but Fire wouldn’t listen to my turtle speak
when Fire’s flame-bone body
climbed trunks to suffocate leaves.
Below Fire, my mother’s body
consumed in black
char that gives no nod
to the memory
of when I first poked
my head out of my shell
as she smiled on a bed
of orange leaves.
After the firefighter’s spray
extinguished Fire,
I waddled to the Turtle Police Station
to demand they arrest Fire.
Fire killed my mother
I spat at the timber front desk
but the secretary said
we can’t arrest a Fire that died.
That Fire’s ghost
roams through the black forest
where my mother screams.
I’m the only one who listens.