The Cartographer of Cinders

In the back yard of winter, the ash tree keeps its promises, black fingertips tracing the fence as if it were a map. A fox moves through the smoke of its own breath, leaving warm punctuation in the snow.

We shovel yesterday into neat squares, lift the charred envelope of last year’s letters. Underneath, the soil is a dark mouth, humming the names we thought were lost.

Somewhere a kettle begins a thin brass song, steam braiding itself through a crack in the door. The house, a lantern with ribs of pine, holds its small planets of light.

I fold the day like a field note and tuck it in my coat, walk out to count the constellations of cinders. Each ember is a remembered coordinate, each memory a compass that never points north.