by Kevin Grauke

There’s no smell
better than leaf smoke
from that night long
ago by the dark lake
when no one cared
how big the fire got
or how bright or
hot or how loud 
it sang to us or 
for how long on
that night long ago
by the lake when
there was no end
to the leaves or 
the fire or the
smoke or the 
song or the dark

Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry Press), which won the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Blue Mesa Review, and Cimarron Review. Originally from Texas, he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.