Apology with Burning Mountainside

The road is a black snake curving
through the hills, my hands gripping
the wheel, driving west. On the radio
reporters describe an especially dry season,
how the trees thirsted for that spark,
the flame that spread through the curling
leaves and tendrils, the stumps and trees
as quickly as a secret in the mouth
of someone untrustworthy. It is September
and dad should be seventy.
When he died I wasn’t there,
and I drove this same route
through the low hills and mountains
to get to my mother. We stood
in the driveway, held each other
and cried. I was so unacquainted
with loss. But here, held in the highway’s
curve, trucks and lights surround
a burning hotel, firemen by this point
unable to do more than keep the fire
from spreading. Father, if you can hear me,
I have some things I’d like to say. I lay
at night thinking of the times
I could have shown compassion
but did not, out of fear or something else,
I don’t know. When I couldn’t understand
what it meant to be a son,
I ran. A bird flies before my headlights,
like a child’s ghost.
I’ll get where I’m going,
a place you know, far from the burning
hills. I’ll sit like a man
too tired to do much else.
Fed by the fire, smoke fills the valley.
It will hang there for days.