Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It’s October, time to put the freshly-shaved fields
to the torch, burn the earth pure of stubble and weed shag -
you need to cauterize the ground, scab it over so it’ll heal,
my father once said. This year, it’s his bright idea to use
homemade napalm. It’ll save a lot of money on torches,
he says, grinning like he lust slinked in at three a.m., eyes blurry
and breath still beery. In the saffron undercurrents of early evening
--easier to see the lip of fire, its borders - my father brings out
three peanut butter jars packed with cream-colored goo,
a wick, his oversized shirt tails trailing behind him like
Tibetan prayer robes. Stand back, he says, then puts the jars
in a triangular pattern and lights one, then another and the last,
but it’s that moment Jack, our deaf, one-eyed bulldog trots
into the center of the napalm Bermuda Triangle for his evening pee,
oblivious to our cries. I run for Jack as he lifts a leg
to the old steel wagon wheel we leave against the boulder
for luck, but my father knocks me down, barrels toward
the first bomb, throws his flannel shirt over it as it whooshes,
a Vaseline-colored cloud of fire that is contained
somewhat by the shirt; my father makes it to the second
and kicks it like he’s back in high school, trying to put one
out of the end zone again. The jar tumbles end-over-end,
then explodes mid-air, an amethyst ball of fire that settles
over the north field, the old tractor barn. The last is too far,
too impossible to reach. As if regaining his hearing a moment
too late, Jack looks up as the last napalm bomb bangs to life,
a spray of flame like a giant red hand that reaches for our dog,
gripping him tight, burning the air from his lungs, cindering his fur,
his last good eye. I stood there helpless as my father chased
our howling, flaming dog around the yard, trying to smother
the apricot threads of flame that clung to Jack’s blackened form,
his flesh crackling like sap pockets exploding In a campfire.
When my father caught up, Jack had collapsed, his body still burning
and try as we might, we couldn’t extinguish the fire until the stink
was too bad, his body unrecognizable. This was the last year
we burnt the wheat field. Six weeks after, we moved from Kansas,
leaving the farmhouse my father and I spent three summers restoring,
leaving Jack, the wheat fields, so many things behind to be tossed about
by the bitter winter winds, the ground so frozen it might never thaw again.