The Devil’s Got The Big Red Switch (Summer, 2014)

The fire consumes me.

The fire consumes everything,

One minute,

She stumbles down 

Through the brown tinder 

Of Balky Hill,

And the next,

Enraged by the bellow of winds,

She spatters out

Her smoldering sons and daughters,

Each reaching for the other,

Propelled by an incendiary dogma

To incinerate Pateros.

Born in the belly of the barometer,

She awakened to the rattle of bunch grass

Against the brittle breeze,

Awakened to the anxiety

Lurking our loudening whispers:

Sure is hot,

We say.

Sure is dry,

We say,

As if clichés could save us.

Now,

The entire season 

Has burst into flames

And the fierce edge is everywhere,

The thin, red lip

Of an organism freed 

From the planet’s molten core,

Feeding off acreage.

In its wake, 

A blackened and silent residue.

From a distance,

The fire is always something

Other than it is

And I can sleep

In the safety of simile.

Closer,

I trace a line

Through the fine ash on the car,

Inhaling,

In narrowed breaths,

The thick, orange glaze

Of burned vegetation

And intimate chemicals 

Of obliterated lives.

I watch the windsock 

And the naïve flutter 

Of leaves in the Linden,

And wonder:

How many twists 

Of erratic, wicking wind

Have yet to blow

Between me

And the end of the world.

    On August 19, 2015, and after a previous summer that saw our communities fighting what was then the largest wildfire in Washington State history, another hellacious wildfire ignited in our neighborhood (It was not to be the largest or the most lethal fire in the county - but it was ours). Access to this fire meant negotiating a poorly designed and dangerous road, with only one way in and that same way out. In the early moments, the fire exploded, driven by fickle and excited winds in the narrow canyon. In what must have been a desperate attempt to outrun the smoke and flame, a forest service fire engine, E642, somehow went off the road, and through some terrible combination of events, three young firefighters lost their lives and a fourth remains in Harborview with extensive burns.  This poem was inspired by these events.

Kaddish For The Rest Of Us

We are the remnant clinging to this brown ground.

Caretakers 

Of bitterbrush and bunchgrass

Strung out like refugees

Along a border of blackened posts

And sagging borders

Of barbed wire,

While a mile north 

And five hundred feet higher,

The Ponderosas,

Their chemistry as exhausted as ours,

Retreat 

Before a bloom of beetles 

Mining the xylem and phloem 

From beneath the geology of their bark.

Everything is out for itself,

Obeying the ancient law,

And everything is vulnerable,

Ready to burst into flames

At sounds above a whisper.

Gone forever are 

The sweet synchronicities and

Sweaty complacencies of summer,

Choked off by a sphinx

Of fire, smoke, and loss.

At the end of this world,

When only ashes are left,

When our sons and daughters

Do not return to us,

We have no demons

In our temples

Or at our gates

Against whom

We can rage.

There is only an anonymous spark, 

Brittle drought, 

And wind,

The flash and clap

Of electrons stripped away

By the collision of temperatures.

Our planet 

And the space 

Through which it spins

Does not take sides.

There is only an omnipotent algorithm:

Two plus two equals four.

In the end,

This is the cross

With which we all must dance,

On blackened land

And with blackened hearts,

Reclaiming our joys

Through our smallest reconstructions:

Two plus two equals four.

This moment,

Like all other moments,

Will pass.

Winter will come,

And spring will follow.

However broken by our grief,

We know this to be true.

Anachnu po.

We are here,

Even now,

Searching for words

To soften the granite heart 

Of the world.

Then, after the fires, came the flooding, taking out our road, flooding fields, threatening barns and homes. 

This time presented somewhat different challenges...

The Day The Frost Road Flooding

 Swept My Granny Off To Sea

The snows were deep that winter,

Loosening the grip of drought,

And after two years of bad wildfires,

We knew the risk of flooding was about.

But none of us were ready

For what was yet to come.

We were naïve to all the risks

As our lives became undone.

The waters rose,

Took out the ditch,

Carved a deep trench down Frost Road,

Nearly washed out my neighbor’s barn,

And two drain fields as it flowed.

We watched as muck and ash,

All kinds of trash,

Drifted past our little home,

But the greatest loss

Was yet to come,

And to this day it makes me cry,

Was when I saw my dear old granny

Slowly floating by.

Oh, the county came,

The county went,

And came and went again.

They said that’s what you get for living here.

Just hope it doesn’t rain.

You know the planet’s two thirds water,

And there’s nothing we can do.

We were told if we did anything,

Someone here would sue.

But none of that helped dear old granny

As she twirled and drifted down

Passing through the culvert

As she floated off to town.

Hey, county guys,

Please grab my granny,

She’s slipped away from me.

We can’t they said,

But we’ll tell the Feds

If she makes it out to sea.

Now they mean well,

These county guys.

They’re our neighbors and our friends.

But how they think about this stuff

I can’t quite comprehend.

From all my schooling,

All my work,

I thought I knew for sure

That an ounce of good prevention

Is worth a pound of cure.

You know,

I don’t care if government is small,

And I don’t care if it is big.

White or brown,

Short or tall,

I couldn’t give a fig.

And I don’t begrudge these county guys

Their salaries or their perks.

But I do expect a helping hand

From a government that works.

Now some of you have asked

About the fate of my dear gran.

How she managed to survive at all

Is more than I can understand.

But she said the hardest part for her

Was not high water or logjams,

But learning from the Spring Chinook

How to navigate the dams.

And when she finally reached Astoria,

The salmon she befriended

Suggested she continue on,

But it was there her journey ended.

It’s what she wants,

And after all, it remains for her to choose,

While she finishes her memoir:

“The System Does Not Work.

You Lose.”