“O, the red tongues! The leavings of the fire!
Red sunshine in October’s smoky air
With all dry grasses rustling in the breeze
Where fireguards saved them. But most fields and hills
Lie black, and one can smell and taste burned grass.
Grim landscape, grim as death! Leavings of fire!
Wild things to whom the grass was as a forest
Woven with saving colors, naked, famishing,
Face sharp-eyed foes. Next season’s bud is scorched,
Her butterfly roasted. Only the green-lobed cactus,
Cooked to pale yellow, writhes half dead.
Red sunshine!
‘Twas yesterday a pillar of leaning smoke
Surprised us, speeding from the north. Men hurried
With water and wet cloth for beating flames;
And at the furrows kindled wavering lines
Of backfire that must eat against the wind
To meet the blaze racing through delicate grass
A-flash like tinder. But where bluestem grew
The flame rose yards, and the counter-fire leaped
Whirling, and their red wings embracing lifted them
Into the roaring smoke.
O, the red leaping!
Jack-rabbits aimlessly scurried, the while enormous
Tumbleweeds ablaze came rolling, rolling, rolling
Over the widest guards.
O, the red sunshine!
Wreckage and ashes where wheat ricks clustered
ready, With the threshing machine among them. That mound was a barn;
The straw heaped over poles flared up like a torch;
A youth rushed in to rescue his horse, but the creature
Wild-eyed with stupor and terror kept leaping and cowering.
We heard his voice ring out from the roar of the red tongues.
Ashes covered their bones.
The leavings of fire!
The smile in his eyes, the laughter, the soft boyish mouth –
Yesterday’s sunshine!
The praise from his sweetheart, the tunes of the first adoration
A-ripple, a-dance in his breast –
O, the leavings of fire!
(Edwin Ford Piper)”
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Faces Poems, Youth Poems, Fire Poems, Smiling Poems, Praise Poems, Laughter Poems, Romantic Love Poems, Horse PoemsBased on Keywords: leavings, widest, wild-eyed, tinder, ricks, famishing, scurried, sharp-eyed, a-dance, a-ripple, tumbleweeds