New Poem: Marked for Life

Marked for Life

I am that fire-hollowed redwood
with the open black belly
who miraculously thrives
stories above the damage.

Sentenced to live,
to shake my green feathers
at the sky like other trees,
I nevertheless bear
the unmistakable scar
of a great love lost,
a charred cave at my base
where her shape
is burned forever.