Over a clear horizon there appeared a column of smoke,
strange and violent. The landscape aflame with flowers
 
and breathing like a giant. Ghostly plume filling the sky
above the plains, its soot rising from a crater
 
several yards across. Grasses leaned toward the hole
and what lay at its center: a nest woven of twigs
 
and eiderdown, compressed into stone. Curled in its heart,
a bird and a mouse, scorched into a labyrinth of bone.