gah...so rough. but there it is.
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Ghostlight

Almost to California, we passed a wildfire.
The full moon did little to dispel the night's desert
of black plains between road and flame; instead,
she only deigned to touch and conjure a genie's cloud
of smoke, lunar blue reflecting on the corpsedust of plants.
In the dark, we passed a funeral pyre.
Life embedded in the sand became dancing citron and ember,
animated in its last throes more than it had been under any sun,
a phoenix held fast at the moment
of rebirth.