Fireweed

A single seedling, camp-follower
of arson—frothing, bombed-out
rubble with rose-purple lotfuls

unwittingly as water overbrims,
tarn-dark or sun-ignited, down
churnmilk rockfalls—aspiring

from the foothold of a London
roof-ledge, taken wistful note of
by an uprooted prairie-dweller,

less settled in St. Martin’s Lane
(no lane now but a riverbed of
noise) than even the unlikely

blackbird that’s to be heard here
gliding and regliding a matutinal
ancestral scripture, unwitting

of past devastation as of what
remains: spires, finials, lofted
domes, the homiletic caveat

underneath—Here wee have no
continuing citty—by the Dean
whose effigy survived one burning.