my grandmother tells me
and flicks a lit cigarette

into our bushes, ashes and embers
fly onto the wood of the house, up

on Mother’s clean windows.
It’s been relentless lately,

beating against the house, rolling
garbage into the street.

She looks tired against it, trying to smooth
down her coarse hair, control her fire.

She knows things are too open here
to stop it, the land flat, unthreatening,

the sky dominant, our homes,
the few oaks and evergreens

we shove into the earth, give no challenge
to that which we cannot see.