Winter Fire
by Rose Marie Berger, for Josephine Jochimisen, Deer Creek Township, Wisconsin

The fire stretched its old bones,
snapping and popping, as it loosened
itself into the weary wood.

They found Josie's body in the basement.
The twisted modern art of her walker
had fused with the beveled panes
of the kitchen windows. Her grip
slipped as the first floor furring
strips burned beneath her.

Patrick, her son, had not missed
a morning milking in twenty years.
In the barn he leaned into the warmth
of his Guernseys, their breath
forming thin smoke in the frozen air,
and thought of his brother in Germany.
Machines hissed and sucked.

The fire spread like daffodils
on a hillside, a blanket of fierce
yellow melting buttercups, verdigris
greens of old copper and deep
lake blues. Patrick rolled himself
into the burning house until he
nearly smothered in the scent.
He could not find her.

There was a lumbering of trucks --
hoses hissing, voices falling off
short in the sharp air. When the
trucks ran dry, the men cracked
the pond and sucked the last depths
of summer onto the house, wildly
raining frogs, algae, minnows
through the roof.

In those last moments, Josie
called on the angels in the names
of her sisters -- Fats, Chub, Snooks --
and her grandfather, Gus, who
held her when the floor collapsed.
Then they all snuck away
to the breathing place under the pond ice
where even the fire could not hide.


Poet Rose Berger lives in Washington, D.C.