Two Lovers vs. A Forest Fire vs. A Book Burning

(for Richard Brautigan and Ray Bradbury)

Long, skinny legs
like twigs get tangled,
set fire to the U.S.
like a book burned
for its controversial words.

A country's pride and greed
swept clean by an act of love
that would cleanse
the many marks
of the Western man's sin.

And in each new Spring came
all things green
"and the leaves of the tree[s]
were for the healing
of the nations."