The wooden pieces, splinter sharp and bright
with flame or gray with ember residue,
drop riverward. The steel so hot it’s white
as noon is plummeting to water, too,
and hissing as it kisses through its path,
or steaming as it sinks and starts to cool:
Here’s jetsam hot as adolescent wrath;
there’s flotsam charred upon the river’s pool.

I knew a character for several years,
bizarrely disconnected from his life.
Abandoned by his mother to his tears
at two years old, when she selected wife
instead of mom, that toddler early learned
to torch and turn away from bridges burned.