Slow Smokeless

We resemble that remark
Frost made about the wood pile.

Someone who lived in turning
Forgot all our handiwork

And left us, far from useful,
Far from a fireplace, to warm

Our own frozen swamp of sticks
With the slow fire of decay.

So here we are, small words
Stacked in cords, page after page,

Absorbed in our own breakdown,
Bones, like everything cut down

And scattered, stacked, or interred,
Neither living nor inert.