Day Twelve<\/p>\n
When the fire came it burned a hole in the porch, Day Twelve When the fire came it burned a hole in the porch, like a portal being opened to the far below. Sissy used to tell me that if you dropped something in it you could hear it fall all the way through to the end of the earth. So one day I took my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4679,"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678\/revisions\/4679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.multer.com\/people\/monica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nlike a portal being opened to the far below.
\nSissy used to tell me that if you dropped something in it
\nyou could hear it fall all the way through to the end of the earth.
\nSo one day I took my collection of eucalyptus buttons
\nand threw them in the blackened pit below;
\nthe jigsaw teeth of the burned out boards
\nlike ivory appendages ripped from bodies of great beasts.
\nI didn’t hear the sound of falling like Sissy said I would,
\nSo I just stood there with my empty jar,
\nbereft of years of good keeping
\nmy collection was swallowed up by that black earth
\nleaving me with the wasted anticipation and the heavy
\nempty jar. It seemed so much lighter when it was full
\neven though it weighed down my arms.
\nSo I walked away from the yawning abyss that swallowed
\nmy eucalyptus buttons whole, with a heavy heart of disappointment.
\nWhen we moved away a short time later
\nI left the jar with its emptiness
\nbeside the pit the inferno had left behind;
\nstanding upright on its own, the jar was
\nthe only thing left in our gutted out home.
\nBut when I grew up and years had whittled my cheeks with age
\ntwenty maybe even thirty years later
\nI went back to the place where the fire started late that night,
\nhoping to look that darkness right in the eye
\nand ask the questions that haunted me for so many years.
\nBut when I pushed my way through the gutted cobwebbed remains
\nof a place I once called home and made my way to the back porch
\nthe darkness was gone, replaced by the outstretched trunks of eucalyptus trees.
\nThe trees rose up in the middle of our porch
\nthe new trunks breaking through the old planks of wood
\npushing upward and upward as if to show that they could.
\nI walked across the deck with slow awestruck steps
\nmy eyes turned upward in reverence of the great canopy.
\nDrawn back to the earth from the skyward reach I heard the crunch below my feet.
\nLifting my foot I held below, the ground was littered with buttons
\nlike a fresh blanket of winter snow.
\nI knelt by the edges of what once was an abyss and touched the base of new life
\nthat grew in the face of darkness and refused the decree: do not be.<\/em>
\nTo my amazement, as I knelt there, I found it beside me
\nUnchanged except on thing, this time when I picked up the old glass jar
\nit was far from empty.
\nFilled to the brim with fallen eucalyptus buttons
\nthe trees had replaced the source that had unknowingly given them life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"