Fire Mind

October firestorm rolled west over
the rim of Eden Creek Canyon.
Smoke combined from hundreds of homes,
barns, photos and lives of seventeen
neighbors roiled in incense of white sage
sacred to tribal people on two reservations
ablaze, their outlawed spring burns
now resurrected brutally in autumn.
Recognizing the ghost of smoke released me
to accept losing everything so that when
our home’s outline emerged after fire, only planks
of patio burning, I resisted calling it "blessing."

That night, hot spots burned around the canyon,
the only lights there until neighbors rebuilt—
power lines had burned like fuses,
exploding suburbs in the brush—
spot fires the only lights except for stars
calling back thousands of others, dark insisting.

The second day after fire, I walked the rim,
first time in twenty years. Consoling neighbors
I’d never met as they sifted ashes over concrete foundations,
I trespassed freely to the east,
caught five goats, two pigs, a cat with
burnt paws. I shot two horses without hooves,
their lungs singed, the blood they breathed
the only moisture within miles. I shot
into another mind that became mine.
The fire: the shot, and my hand: the bullet.
I followed a trajectory heartless as flames over so many.

Next week people flow through my arms.
I survive to hold them, open my cage of ribs.
Their sobs become my heartbeat, their tears: my blood.
My warmth from pressure of motion,
the same heat Santa Anas raise crossing the Mojave.
The town weeps itself dry while I wonder,
where are my tears of survival?
Each March, I burn brush. The flame at
the matchtip, the shape of an orange tear.
Neighbors watch. Every spring a warning.