Vesta
What remained of a redbud still bloomed while oil
was pumped out of the prairie
below what they called a mountain
although it was just a ridge. They had named the town
for a goddess rarely shown in human form,
instead as fire, but known to be woman without a doubt,
the oldest goddess, the one that lasted the longest
until the emperor forced everyone
to let her go. All could catch fire here: gas fields, oil fields, pumps,
the pipelines running to refineries.
They had named the mountain hope where the dead
were buried and people married, where all were children
washed clean by the blood
of the lamb and men testified of fire they knew better than salvation.
Around the church, the ground
sprung with anemones, a kind named after two kings
and for its leaf, the crow’s foot,
which was the daughter of the wind. The prairie below swelled
in low mounds, not manmade
but built by wind in time of ancient drought.
Women became attentive as flames to pieces in friction,
the earth itself fire
where lakes have numbers, not names.