Nimshew, California

Issue 14 | Summer 2025 | Wren Tuatha

                    After “Hokkaido” by Kit Fan

It is rainy season in Nimshew.
	Here, things green in winter.
	Charred bark from the fires
	breathes in the wet. New shoes
	on red loam flecked with black
	embers, like faraway mahogany
	obsidian. Obsidian, volcanic glass. 
At the coming of rain, Nimshew emotes.
	Showers and wandering fog clean
	the air; bluejay, quail, and marten
	breathe the wet pause, let pulses slow. 
	Runoff trails write names of fire dead
	on canyon sheers—remember a deer 
	on fire, time on fire.
Nimshew means little water—a warning,
	a wisdom. We who sleep here track
	the physics of lightning, a hasty campfire 
	or sparks from a hanging tailpipe. 
	Just when we tell each other we own 
	the land, trickster fire learns commerce 
	from us, playing consumer 
	and entrepreneur.