Night Drive

The old dispute; do we think in words
or images that words find? Last night
driving through the black hollows
of prairie between small towns
you passed a refinery’s big stack,
aimed at the moon, blowing a flame
long enough to gutter the horizon
like a candle bowl; someone, you thought,
had told you once of this place;
of the earth roaring grief, the wind,
tearing at the high flame
and night’s walls scorched red—or
was it only speech that haunted you,
a remembered tongue whose heat
flung words to tatters, ragged
as this banner of flame, wild
as her yellow hair in wind?