An Oak or an Owl Can Be Coal

If they die but do not rot—
Coal comes from death that did not

Go back, the most part, to life.
Poised on the edge of the knife,

With one side of the blade peat
And the far side air that eats

And breaks and brings back to breath
The strain that was eased by death,

What was, for a short while, oak
Must come down as ghost or smoke.