Do ochre leaves afire with whoring coral
breach old country skies so fiercely,
those ceded skies not so keenly blue?
 
Do they fall as burnt offerings, yet mass
at warm roots in vain, like these that drop
by dreaming gums on lands with stolen names?
 
Do they so kindle cousins' hearts, those
who walk ancestral paths with no reach
for lost kith and hearth keening in their veins?
 
Burning woods of the North, your fiery tones,
though sprung from severed bloodlines, recall
less shame than conjoined loss of home’s terrain.

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