Two years after the Pot Peak fire
the color returns to the wheat.
The cougar returns to the cave
he grew up in. The salmon
swim back to the ladder of rushes
and rapids in Railroad Creek.
It turns out the soul didn’t die.
Only hidden away in a weedy place.
Forgotten, or maybe confused
for something else. Like the sparred owl,
or like the black water beetle
climbing up out of its shell,
eating its way through the old eyes,
letting the sunlight uncurl its wings.
Kai Carlson-Wee is the author of Rail (BOA) and has received a Pushcart Prize, MacDowell Fellowship, and Wallace Stegner Fellowship. He lives in San Francisco and is a lecturer at Stanford University.
