My father’s eyes last stung with smoke in the Driftless
thirty-five years ago—
flames swarming up limestone bluffs
and leapfrogging through the open oak groves.
Ugly old firebreaks stretching thirty feet wide
demanded weeding. But we needed to school at home,
milk the sheep, and fix our barns, so we watched
thistle take those bared county ditches, inch across ridges,
then choke wild grasses that sponged up rain.
Like others I planted the firebreak
where it ran by my house—
a patch of green beans and corn.
I let pink thistle creep through the rest.
During the harvest, white-spotted mouths
and red-dotted faces flared up again,
spreading through coulees, through children.
Our children, who could have been anything,
other than dead.
We’ve watched thistle take root and rain turn to flood.
Beyond the Driftless, more safeguards have fallen.
Restoring them may be like uprooting a garden,or like trying to claw a child from the ground.
Dawn Perry is a writer who lives and works in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA in English Literature from Princeton University.