Joyce Schmid
California Fires
Forests swell and shrink,
shape-shifting in the smoky breath
of flames holed up in hollow trees,
the sky in pain, inflamed; red sun, red moon,
weird-yellow sky.
No rain. Smoke blown away by wind,
the very wind that spreads the fire.
We’re given darkness to protect us,
only darkness,
like the shadow of an asteroid six miles wide
preparing dust and stones and trees
and cars and factories and condominiums
to burst in blizzards blazing over us,
erasing us.
You ask me why I sit inside,
door closed to everything I love,
as if computer screens
were windows on eternity and I
were trying to climb through.
The sun is almost down, you say, not gone,
Open out your arms, embrace the wind.
Embrace the wind?
The wind?
The fire-starter, devil wind?
AuthorsName
Joyce Schmid‘s recent work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Antioch Review, Worcester Review, Newtown Literary, San Antonio Review, and other journals and anthologies. She lives with her husband of over half a century in Palo Alto, California.
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