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Burn Victims

By April 1, 2010 No Comments

Burn Victims

by Paul Willis


The oak trees by the creek are sweating blood.


There where the fire passed through, pressed by the wind,


their barks are blackened, and oozing through the singe,


red beads of sap drip sorrowingly down


to ashes. If we knew Gethsemane


were not a garden anymore and wept


itself, the knotty foreheads of each burl


contracted in one brow of woe, our prayer


would not be for life’s cup but merely that


our hearts might burn within us. Seared and scarred,


we’d bleed in hope of olives buried deep


among the roots, where what remains may rise.


Paul J. Willis is a professor of English at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. His most recent collections of poetry are Visiting Home (Pecan Grove Press, 2008) and Rosing from the Dead (WordFarm, 2009).
Paul J. Willis

Paul J. Willis

Paul Willis has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Somewhere to Follow (Slant, 2021). He has also recently published a YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green (Slant, 2020), and the essay collection To Build a Trail (WordFarm, 2018). He is a professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. His website is www.pauljwillis.com.