a dialogue

We spent a day in the cabin in the woods, to celebrate our third wedding anniversary. It's a little tradition that started with our honeymoon in that cabin. And while we were there, enjoying the quiet, Heather worked on a poem that came out quite well:

We:
Dawn opens silent as a bloom
Above the gutted house, its dark
Bones crisscrossed in the lucent air.
The phoebe sings. Which of our hearts
Can drink this young wind sweet as wine
And not taste bitter ashes? See:
All that our hands have built is tinder
For the flame. So it must be.

You:
The phoebe sings, and flicks her tail.
Her eggs will hatch this year. Seeds wake
Beneath the blackened ground; the grass
Will rise, the fireweed and the creeper take
The ruin, wrap it thick with life.
Know this: each day (though all may burn)
Beneath the faithful sun ten thousand
Trees are born. The earth returns.

We:
No. What is lost, is lost. The black
Beams wrapped in their green vines will fall,
And will not rise, though spring should wake
The dead. Some are asleep. Not all.
The green heart will not beat again
In brittle saplings, winter cracked;
Dead limbs that hang like bones from broken
Trees. Don't tell us it comes back.

You:
You do not know what lies behind
My door. Where sings the fallen bird,
Where stand the shattered, crafted beams,
No eye has seen, no ear has heard.
The world's tale runs through the years:
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
But all your tears are safe within
My bottle. All is held in trust.