Two poems about burning leaves

        FIRE

On Saturday I supervised a change of state:

a pile of brush two-years high

had reached the point it couldn’t wait.

In our field beside the tracks

where berries would be planted soon

my job’s to make sure nothing

changes state without intention that might

need a dousing intervention with all-out

sirens and pump-truck monsoons.

So, I stand with shovel at attention

near a snake of garden hose in grass

and watch for flares of flaming gases

that might leap to nearby desiccated leaves

or other inappropriate locations having

slipped the noose of well-soaked earth I’d

laid in cautious preparation.

Far-off low-pressure voids not calling

desperately to be satisfied, the breeze

is dangerously slight.

Under blue, where gray clouds collide,

the sun can’t scorch with all its might;

still, I wear a straw corona, brimmed

to outwit melanoma

A nearby chipmunk, overseeing,

first hops forward then goes fleeing,

she does this half a dozen times,

like me, to wit:  another

vacillating state of being

Jim Culleny

5/2/13

(3 Quarks Daily)

SUNSET

At the very moment the sun sets,
a farmer burns dry leaves.
It is nothing, this fire.
It is a small, controlled thing,
like a family ruled by a dictator.
Still, when it burns,
the farmer disappears;
he is invisible from the road.
Compared to the sun, all fires here
are short, amateurish;
they end when the leaves are consumed.
Then the farmer reappears, raking up ashes.
But death is real.
As if the sun had finished what it came to do,
had made the field grow and then
inspired the burning of the earth.
So now it can set.

Louise Gluck
From the collection of poems A Village Life (2020)