It Fell [Soon will be fires]
At the grill, the fire sends smoke to the trees where once was a red pine, the one we’d gaze at,
with Niko in your belly, before the beginning of it all, when he was still, then after the thaw he
couldn’t stop moving, sent you into talking of sun because you sat under a lake tree, the white pine
in Gitchee Gumie shores, you’d drink from it because we knew there’d be a time it’d be poison to
drink from, the gods’ll also be mad, Listen close is what you say, Spare the anguish and accept as I hang my
head, it’ll be my fault like the world’s, a world of quiet, where a flower will open under a sliver of
moon, in a soil of spotted butterfly, unable to dowse itself without unblemished drops.
Alex Vartan Gubbins was born in Chicago, grew up in Wisconsin, and loves the forest in the UP of Michigan. He writes his own poetry and likes to translate Armenian and Arabic poetry. Sometimes, he eats pizza with only basil.