burn scars
absentmindedly scanning the landscape
for rubble and char
catching the thought
…so this didn’t burn…
a thousand miles from fire
the way I think
…where’s her mask?…
watching an old movie
fire’s burned its way into my psyche
like pandemic terror
like checking every black shape here for condor
or every sunny drizzle seeking rainbow
migrating snow geese
some days joy hides
easy to forget the contours of its cheek
or the scent of its shirt in the closet
some days awe is a memory
stored under basement boxes
at risk of disappearing into a cobwebbed corner
but today
the snow geese stream by
loose white black-studded Vs against
clear blue sky
and we gasp over and over
at the spectacle of black/white/blue
at the never-endingness of the drifts of white
coming in on the wind
it’s an unfamiliar abundance
that we in this time of diminishment
imperilment risk extinction decline
fragmentation extirpation catastrophe
have little acquaintance with
and the rush of wings and bodies and joy
all these beings requiring essentially nothing of us
no intervention no advocacy no sacrifice
is so welcome we blink back tears
my son says if the sky had a necklace
it would be made of snow geese
we sit in wonder
not just listening to their cacophony
but feeling it inside our skins
the collective vibration of their thousands
of hearts and synapses
the air itself trembling
at holding such tenderness
trying to get clean
air purifiers –
hot new accessory of the 2020s
with prefilters in an array of colors
to match your moods –
I go for charcoal
over electric blue
when we open it
the boys discuss how it compares
to the ones at their schools
especially in their auditoriums
it’s one more thing I’ve never dealt with
that these times demand
unmasking
Thinking of our relatives who died from diphtheria: my grandfather’s mother Rosemary Farley Schaaf (seen in the sidebar photo here), my grandmother’s sisters Frances and Josephine Barber, and Alex’s grandmother’s siblings Ruth and Bert Waldman.
Friday they will unmask us
and what will our faces do?
twitch nervously or beam gratefully?
after two years of suspended anticipation
my hope muscles have atrophied
I’ve lost the knack for moving on, moving forward
we’ve no link with the 1918 survivors –
the year my grandfather was born,
he’d no memory of it
instead, diphtheria is the story my husband and I grew up with:
four of our grandparents’ siblings and one mother claimed
while our grandparents were still children
now we get the Tdap or DTaP shot and
our grandparents’ devastating loss feels like
something from a different world
but those 1918 flu survivors –
how did they shed their masks and re-emerge?
how did masking become unknown to us all again?
I’ve lost my bearings for judging what is safe
I don’t even know what Greek letter comes next
let alone how to recognize it hovering on the horizon
it’s like trying to judge which smoke is from California
and which is from the next block
ready to claim what’s yours
in these days
when threats are everywhere
and we’ve grown unacquainted with joy
I still can’t imagine bringing my naked face
somewhere it could calmly swallow
anything new
whether to know
two ways today I’m asked
if I want to know
what’s in the air we’re breathing
and the answer is
I don’t know
because we can’t stop bringing it into our bodies
and we aren’t the type to pick up and move
the numbers may tell us
what we don’t want to hear
but if we don’t know
at least we don’t know
Margaret says,
We’re doomed. And?
Sarah says,
Don’t give your worries swimming lessons.
I say,
When can I just breathe easy?
And, will my children ever?
the schools keep finding a way
when we said you can’t gather
they figured out how to get together
how to support our children
one living room to the next
when the towns were burning down
the schools sealed their ducts
so smoke stayed outside
and the buildings were saved
when flames chased toward the hospital
the schools called up their bus drivers
home on vacation, they drove toward danger
and rushed patients to safety
when whole neighborhoods burned
the schools reassured them –
you belong here with us
wherever you land
now they’re busing children
from the county’s four corners
so kids can have one bit of same
in this immense uncertainty
when the students had nothing
no backpacks no Chromebooks
no boots or winter coats
the schools greeted them
with a handful of everything
they set up free thrift shops
in the school parking lot
when we worried about the playground
they carted off the wood chips
when we worried about smoke
they tested the air
already feeding everyone
lunches for free
they added food pickup
for those whose pantries were gone
when I read that one-sixth
of Coal Creek Elementary families’ homes burned
(60 of 380 students’ homes are gone)
I began to understand
the immensity of the undertaking
to try to stabilize what has been deeply traumatized
to hold together a bit of the fabric
that once knit these families to each other
we ask so much of our schools:
our teachers, administrators,
support staff, custodians, paras, and kitchen staff,
school nurses, and counselors,
social workers, and bus drivers,
special ed teachers, psychologists,
registrars, front office staff,
and occupational therapists –
any title you think of at our schools –
we’re asking more of them now
than ever before
knowing that some of them
are also navigating their own loss
41 of them dealing
with their own new unhoused lives
while trying to stay hopeful
for the children they nurture
the library, in the pandemic, post-fire
at the library:
free masks in lunch bags
a sign that says
offer a message of hope
(or something like that)
along with cut-out hearts,
markers, paperclips,
and a string strung with
love and good wishes.
all the books we’re looking for are here.
all 3 Cedar wants are in the Teen section.
on our way up I ask
if he’s been in there before.
once, when Owen was registering
for the Summer Reading Program
he says.
this, then, is a rite of passage.
we enter and it turns out
he knows just about all the kids at the computers.
yes, this is his zone now.
it’s not like the old days –
we hustle in and out
the water fountains are padlocked
the librarians are behind sneeze guards
and there are no more golf pencils and slips of paper
to jot down Dewey Decimals.
but it is like the old days, too –
a warm place where we take care of one another
and believe anything is possible.
the first heart on the line reads
thank you for welcoming us in
and giving us somewhere to be
(or something like that).
it’s still a home away from home,
which is especially welcome
when your home is no more.
subterranean flame
what if no one started it?
no one to blame
or hate
or punish
what if it breathed itself into being?
one long exhale from those Carboniferous bogs
the tip of its red tongue
flicking out to meet
bleached brittle grasses
already given over to drought
what if it wasn’t even fire that grew flame?
but rather the charged static
of this paused and polarized time
the dead air crackling
with our unmet needs
maybe it wasn’t you or me or them
who lit the first match
maybe the very air combusted
on the disbanding of the Sifter Squad
I signed up to sift ash
but within hours
the public health people
warned us to stop.
Isn’t that just how it is these days
when Grandma’s soup bowl
and a couple of drawer pulls
will find a way to kill you, too?
I was looking forward to playing
neighborhood archeologist.
I was looking forward to finding
something someone had lost.
New Year’s Eve after the Marshall Fire
when the only air to breathe
is so cold it burns your lungs
it, too, feeds your cells
in these the days of emergencies
of Plan B or C or D
or abandoning all plans
and surrendering to survival
let us remember
what a gift it is to have cold crystals
descend upon us
what a miracle that waves of fire
and whispers of snow
exist
