Unnatural Sky

July 8 2015

You can look directly into the sun;

a small disc,

dull yellow

in the flat grey murk.

It feels claustrophobic, looking up,

an unnatural sky

too dim, too close.

And an acrid scent, a catch of breath

that's vaguely unsettling;

something impending

but what, and when?

The world on fire, tinder dry

somewhere west.

Standing forests are torched,

earth scorched

down to mineral soil.

And grasslands swept with flame,

ragged lines of half-burned smoke

racing windward.

The roar of a fire

is locomotives, hurtling by.

Where exhausted men

streaked with soot, and soaked in sweat

are unable to hear

even themselves.

But it is silent here, the air still.

An uneasy expectancy,

the calm that comes before?

Or are we exempt from calamity,

indifferent nature's

terrible power?

Avid oxygen, a random spark.

Trees ignite

in contagions of fire,

heat begets heat

and fuel dries.

And all we have is flight;

helpless

as forest animals driven out.

The humility of fire;

predator and prey

side-by-side.

It's a bad year for forest fires. Like pollen counts, I think from now on every year will be worse: the consequence of climate change. And combined with that dry heat, the pine beetle infestation has left the forests full of dead standing wood.

Even though we're far to the east, I've been smelling woodsmoke intermittently. The sky has been unnaturally hazy some days. You'd think we were far enough away to be exempt; but perhaps all those fires are affecting us as well. Just as there is only one ocean -- despite the many seas and straights we insist on giving names -- there is only one ocean of air. We're all breathing the same stuff.

(There is often some science in my poems, and I'm very fussy about keeping it accurate. The 2nd last stanza is such an indulgence. In the necessary shorthand of poetry, avid oxygen characterizes oxygen as the highly reactive poison that it is (at least if you're an anaerobe, or rust-free steel, or the target of a free radical). And heat begets heat describes the positive feedback effect of fire: that it is an exothermic reaction, and so self-propagates; easily escalating out of control until it exhausts all potential fuel.)