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Adrião Pereira da Cunha's avatar

The poem feels like someone trying to hold the beauty and the damage of the land in the same breath.

There’s a real ache in the images burned wings, boiling water, fish drying on the banks like forgotten memories.

What struck me most is how the poem doesn’t shy away from the destruction but still insists on the possibility of renewal.

The way fire is described as something that cleans and also wounds feels honest, not romanticized.

You can sense the speaker’s connection to the land through the tribal names, like a thread of memory running underneath everything.

The dried‑out suckerfish hit me hardest they feel like a symbol of how far things have been pushed.

I love how the poem leans into the idea that healing isn’t soft; it’s a kind of breaking open.

There’s a quiet hope in the wish for the lake to gather itself again, like a body trying to remember how to live.

The poem carries this longing for balance, for letting the land breathe the way it once did.

By the end, it feels like a prayer for restoration one spoken by someone who loves the land enough to tell the truth about it.

J. Alexandra Hart's avatar

Beautiful hommage to the West Coast. I see California, Oregon, dry summers and fire season, waters as commodity just like the trees, divvied up to serve a purpose not their own.

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