Wildfire

May 23 2020

Grass crunches underfoot.

The buds are clenched

like small green fists

when they should have unfurled.

Its a parched spring, starved of rain,

and there's a pall in the air

an acrid scent.

Somewhere upwind

a forest burns.

Animals take flight.

Trees turn to matchsticks

belching dense black smoke.

And tired men

drenched in grimy sweat

shout over its roar.

The sound of air rushing in

and wood exploding,

of flames thundering as noisily

as a herd of bison 
spooked by wolves.

Even fire clouds

igniting lightning storms.

While here, the calm has an unsettled edge

of menace

dread

foreboding.

As if something were hovering

just past the horizon

that may or may not come.

Some pray for rain.

A few choose escape.

While others are wary,

loading up the truck

with what they'll take in the fire.

But I remain;

fatalistic, perhaps

or maybe just smug

I've somehow been favoured

by the gods

or virtue

or chance.

Or in denial

as I go about my business

of the usual spring cleaning

some minor repairs,

a little lawn care

and basic maintenance.

A good homeowner and good neighbour

I keep the place up

plan prudently,

presuming nothing much changes

in the day to day

of a modest life.

No uncontrolled fires.

No hundred year floods.

No careening trucks

or drunken drivers.

And no small artery

that springs a leak

and becomes a gusher,

blasting the squidgy grey matter

of the right cortex

like a high-pressure hose.

That had always been there

on hair-trigger

like tinder-dry wood.

It's been an extremely dry spring. My lawn really is crunching underfoot, and the buds seem arrested. They've just instituted a fire ban. There is a low grey overcast, which reminds me of the sky in fire season; even though there is no smell of smoke, and I haven't heard of anything burning ...yet.

I also just watched a move called Wildlife, and I suspect some of the imagery in this movie informed the poem. It's a small film about an itinerant working class family – husband, wife, 14 year old son – that is quietly imploding in their middling Midwestern town. The backdrop is a wildfire burning out of control, somewhere close. It may be a cheap metaphor, but I think it works in this film.

I've also just been getting my blood pressure under control. When it's not well managed, I can't help but wonder whether there might be an incipient aneurysm -- a weak artery – lurking somewhere in my brain. How we can be blind-sided by events; and how a life can radically change from one second to the next. I chose the right cortex (instead of the left) simply for the rhyme: right and high and dry. But it may be telling that the right side is also the seat of language ...which is pretty much everything to me.

I write about these themes often — contingency, our conceit of agency — and with my usual general air of misanthropy and pessimism. So I'm not sure I needed an unprecedented pandemic – even though, in future, the poem will probably be read in that context – to colour my somewhat bleak worldview!

The thunderstorm reference may have left readers scratching their heads. But big fires can give rise to them: when the super-heated air funnelling up over the fire hits the cool air above it, the moisture in the hot air condenses and forms pyrocumulus clouds, which in turn can form pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which can produce lightning, thunder, and rain. (Not that my explanation needed those technical meteorological terms for fire clouds ...more that I just couldn't resist!)

(Rain is forecast for tomorrow, btw. So if this poem hadn't been written today, it may never have been. ...Tomorrow now (as I post this). Still no rain.)