Seventeen years ago
     a roar engulfed
the singing pines -
       countless breaths exhaling
         the needle sting of smoke.
They stood in shredded funeral garb
    flinging glowing ember flowers
onto us below.
    They witnessed our
         syncopated falling
  and the operatic scream
    of twisting steel,
         the cymbal crash
  of exploding windows.
                We knelt prostrate
         before the fire
bowed and broken:
    an army in black surrender.

Up on the hill, now
   between the sleek sheets
 of glistening modernity
          and long embedded gardens,
    I am still here.
The run-away grass
       (that feathered doom)
           tickles my concrete pad.
     The triad tongues 
of fire, water & tanin
      have left printed shadows
   and the jagged prod
     of steel beams into nothing 
            is my toothy skyline.
                
The house that was.