Soot Birds

Fire-cloud soot bird
wings westward
blood red tail shadowing
ponderosa, lodge pole, aspen
helpless before the heat-driven beast.

Bronze-winged sisters circle low
over wheat fields where dust devils
vortex wildly, building speed until
they run out of dirt and disappear
like genies, back to the air

transmuted

the earth is the tree
is the fire is the smoke
destruction, the vortex
death, the rebirth.