And can you hear it? A quiet rumbling

after the trauma of sudden sleep: the world

stretches, scratches its tired face, shakes

at what waking has wrought: bodies burning,

trees crying, leaves pulled back like hands from the flames.

No one and no thing warms by these fires. Ashes

lie cold, a flimsy barrier against the growing whimper

and collective wail: those the reckoning left behind.

And can you feel it? A slow vibration

under the feet, the ground trembling as if

it could know, does know, what comes up from beneath it:

anger, sulfurous and molten, subsuming grief,

exhorting all to move, to move, to move,

a noise from somewhere both far and close.