decisions
four fires
in one day
in our county
today
I tell my son
of the first smoke plume I saw
years after moving here
none more seen for years
now there’s something new
in the weather forecast –
fire watch:
like tornados, but longer
more hot windy nervous weather
on the horizon
how many go bags
should we pack?
how far away is far enough?
how close is still safe?
The View from Bear Peak
we climb Bear Peak
and take in the beige haze
the magenta slurry line
the brown and black trees
of the NCAR Fire’s modest burn
and the forest-green line
where the grass fire is regrowing
we see a plume of smoke
out toward Lagerman perhaps
and look toward Lyons
to be sure that fire’s out
our puppy swims
in the Cragmoor stock pond
already green in April
and later that afternoon
when he vomits three times
we worry about blue green algae,
which kills dogs within hours
no one we’ve known
has lived this way
not knowing what to expect
from the earth or the sky
this wariness toward the land
and the toxins all around
disorienting, exhausting, disheartening
disconnection mounts
and fear moves in
so much that once was a balm
becomes another source of dis-ease
unbreaking the eggs
so many broken eggs these days
albumin streaming out
leaving yolk to float unsheathed
inside we don’t find paradise
no pastoral landscape humming along
no, it’s despair, powerlessness, resignation
I don’t know how to uncrook the hockey stick
how to bring George Floyd back to breath
how to put the virus back in the bat
how to unspark the fire that swallowed the homes
but it’s like the starfish
shard by shard of fragile shell
I place in my palm
doing something
I trust
to help
the fire break holds
it’s like a dream:
the pink lines hold
and the land stays land
and the sky stays sky
with only a hotspot here and there
how long will we have
before the great spatula comes
and mixes things again?
unprepared for the future
I had seen it on Twitter –
the slurry bomber painting hills I know red –
but that didn’t prepare me
for magenta slashes across our landscape
visible miles away
just one more sign
I’m unprepared for the scale
of the crisis we’re in
fire everywhere
everywhen
our relationship with the land
will never be the same
our children will not know
how it was to live with smokeless skies
before the hockey stick curve
made itself felt
in our choking air
NCAR Fire after Record Snow
another day spent tasting the air for smoke
checking in on friends
body twitching with fight or flight
and this after months of snow
more snow than we could dare dream of
still never enough to damp down the threat of flame
it’s all year now
it’s every elevation
it’s a whole new level
of never-safe
buying cold
she tells me doubtfully
it’s pretty dark
it’s back in the trees
that area holds onto snow
I grin
she suggests a different place
now this place over here –
this one’s sunny and bright
dry (but windy)
it melts out a lot earlier
I explain patiently
we’re looking for a little refrigerator
where we can escape the Plains
cold and wet is what we want
a place where all the PurpleAir disks glow green
where snow is measured in feet
where water sits right below the surface
ready to douse a spark
where the aspen are plump with sap
and the spring’s gushing never slows
a place to counter glare and ash and salmon skies
numb to the mercury’s fever
not painful net zero
oh powers that be,
prevailed upon to make net zero
not happen
may you instead find a way
to make net zero
not painful
we can’t exempt our way out
of December fire
or chronic drought
or climate catastrophe
we can’t have a future where
we can predict what the weather will bring
built on a present where
anything goes
don’t grandfather in the status quo
that makes it so hard
for so many
to breathe right now
and what are we to say
to the school kids
who came to council
pleading for this code?
who we already promised
we’d build better?
who we already told
we’d heard?
if money needs finding,
then find it –
as they say,
the banks are full
our town’s already blackened by carbon
and built on coal –
if you’d have blue skies someday
don’t give up on green now
cross-Tasman smoke
at first it seemed low-lying cloud
like the grey embedded in Great Lakes life
a natural ceiling for a January day
but when I saw the sun
my heart slumped
that sick pink-salmon shade
that without fail means fire
it doesn’t matter how many oceans we cross
the earth everywhere is burning
still we recklessly slake our thirst for jet fuel
while the ash rains down on our hair
we should undoubtedly stay home
satisfied with others’ memories
but it feels like asking too much
to refrain from ever knowing
some of what is left
