Night Sky with Blue Silo and a Bonfire

We chopped down the weeds that hurt, the burdock
with its burrs that dug into the skin. We cut the nettles,
all the stinging weeds that stuck to us and to the sheep,
that lodged in the paws of the dogs, pricked us
through our shoes and jeans, wounded our hands
when we moved through the field, wanting to feel
something wild within ourselves. No matter where
on the stem my son gripped the nettles, no matter what
chopping tool he brought from the barn, the weeds
got hold of him anyhow. J’s whole back turned
into a map of burrs, his same back struck last year
by a car, the back he bent now to feed the fire, bent
with his long responsibility for his mother, and his despair
at how fast she was going blind. We all bent, attempted
to get the burdock out of each other’s hair as our heap
blazed high enough to heat our faces
when we drew close enough—and we drew that close
over and over, poking the flames with our sticks,
with our half-built houses and our mounting debts,
with our misspoken words and cancer scares, with our dread
for the whole heating earth. We leaned into the weedfire
with all the wavering love we could endure receiving
from each other. With three flashlights between us, we slashed
and yanked at more in the dark, knowing the burdock
would seed and grow right back—release new burrs
into the wooly sides of the sheep, and whoever of us
was not ill or gone, still getting along and not too caught up
chopping at other fields, would be lucky to bend here again,
cut down a day’s worth of spiky burrs just to ignite them,
watch their hot shapes reflect on the blue metal of the silo.
To behold this fire of stinging weeds even once together
felt extraordinary, to see the smoke of what stung
rising right in front of us, light against the night sky.