by Joan Mazza
Past tax day, end of April, below freezing
this morning, iced water for the strays,
a good day for a fire in the wood stove,
started with old newspapers. A headline
from 2018 says, Philip Roth is Still Here.
No. He isn’t. A day to burn more paper—
heat from receipts, bills paid long ago.
Medicare statements for my tibial plateau
fracture, cataract and retinal surgeries.
Time to toss vaccine records for Michi,
Quatrain, Haiku, and Sestina—pets
of the last decade, last sleeping companions.
Shelf of calendars with lunch dates
with friends who moved on, passed on,
disappeared. I let some go. Now I burn
what’s left, what reminds me and still burns.
I feed the flames old poems now revised,
handouts from workshops I won’t review,
writing by classmates I don’t remember,
never knew. Closing documents for houses
I no longer own, printed Internet recipes,
notebooks with shopping lists, to-do lists,
ideas for poems—too cryptic to be useful.
They offer up the heat of sunlight that grew
the trees that made the paper. I watch them
burn and brighten the morning darkness,
chase away the last of April’s cold and damp.
I will scatter their ashes in the garden.