Conflagration - May 30 2025

 

Conflagration

May 30 2025



Dense smoke this morning.

Upwind, wildfires rage

and I can taste the acrid smoke

in the thick grey air.

The smell of burnt wood

has me on edge,

my pulse quickening

all my senses alert.

A primeval feeling of threat

I can't suppress

wells up in me,

time slows

my focus narrows.

I am a small woodland creature

smelling danger

that can’t outrun the blaze.

In a world on fire

when it’s hard to breathe

and there’s nowhere left to flee

it’s how slow suffocation must feel,

every breath

sucking deeper

as air thins and panic grows.

Fleeting thoughts

and futile regrets

race through my head,

of lessons that should have been learned

and human arrogance,

of forces so vast

we can't understand

let alone effect.

But thinking gets me nowhere,

feeling hurts,

and my eyes burn

in the poisoned air,

so I return to the house

pull down the shades

and go back to bed;

still coughing

as I toss and turn

and pull the covers up over my head.

Taking refuge in darkness

and the reassuring weight.

Our forbears were fatalists

who calmly accepted

their own inconsequence.

While our contemporaries

put their faith in God

and pray for rain.

Or whatever god, by whatever name

the devout invoke,

and if not for rain

then a change of wind

or unseasonal cold.

So I, a non-believer, try to surrender as well,

as unnatural as it feels

and as unpracticed as I am

at letting go.

Fires too big

for us to stop,

too numerous

to even keep watch of.

And too little rain

that’s too short and too late

to save us from ourselves.