'Pine' wins the Stonewood Prize in the Aurora Writing Competition, 2016

Pine


Once, at dusk,
from a summer train,
I saw a burning car
in a peachfuzzed cornfield.
Two boys running away from it,
laughing.

In winter I saw that same car in a costume of snow
sinking
as if with the joy's weight.

I found out this:  there's no such thing as sin.

Take last night, here in Festalemps:
a white hair of lightning clove a pine
clean in two.

I held the man I'd stolen, as he held me.  Equal thunder.  Equal thievery.
We were each other's hot money.
We were each other's.  In wads.

Then we smelt black smouldering.  Flesh.
Not us.

                       The pine.

This morning we walked to where it had split & burnt.

Ants were making chains of themselves
plundering
sneaking off
with little lamps of resin.

Since then it's been little lamps of resin
walking out of his nostrils,
little lamps of resin
walking out of his ears & lips,
little lamps of resin
walking out of every hole

in his lit body.