WOOD Poem by Ruth Lasters

Did you ever see
the aftermath of fireworks? The branches of smoke, not

the spark, but the fluffy trunks in exactly the same
place where rockets just burst open. The air wood

that after they've died down emerges for you
for a few seconds. The residual value that is actually more splendid than

the intended beauty of crackling coloured fire. So is too,
after you have sighed that, despite everything, unfaithfulness, you

still love me, what afterwards hangs in the room in a more penetrating,
terrible, unwitting way more beautifully: the irreparability

between us.