Remission

Beneath the cherry trees I have counted

And weighed each flake of flame beneath

My skin- as if counting and weighing

Them could bring their burning to an end

Futility of poetry: as if naming and

Defining could ever douse any of it

The truth is I do not from whence

This burning came, or from whence

The storm- or why what was within

Me was such stacked empty cordage

That it fell, cleaved, burnt to twisted

Cinder the moment of storm's entrance

Fallacy of the knower: that this

Pain could ever suppurate if only

The mind could ever learn to doubt it

And so, confounded I have sat

Beneath the cherry trees

And with this poor poem

Won but another moment's

Passage from these flames