PRESCRIBED FIRE (written)
I woke up and kept trying to rub the sleep out because everything seemed like a windshield all steamed up from heavy petting
but the dog was the only one panting
too close to the woodstove.
Maybe it’s just that thing going around “The eyes clogged with the dust of death”
Where everyone seems to have a smear of soot over their face that they can hardly see through.
I went outside and smelled that it was only smoke
So I stood in the yard while big gray ashes swung down and settled like sullied snow.
I do this thing to my life every few years
sometimes every night
an accident
that I like to play off as prescribed fire
who am I kidding though
I am not a field of blueberries
So really it’s just arson
And I know this because when I heard about the man who stood in the center of the intersection pouring gasoline over his head and struck a match
I thought
that was me
that was me
And I am not a Phoenix
But I will find a way to do this again.
And it’ll be as surprising as when I pass that house I pass every night
and see the old man in his lazy boy
yellow with the dim lamp and television flashing blue - all alone.
But one night I drive by a little early or a little late, right on time to see a woman sit, just feet from him, and vanish from my view behind a red geranium in the window as she lowers herself into her chair
and I realize he’s not the lonely man I pity every day - she’s been there beside him all along
and who am I to think I know anything about a life I’ve never sat with
never even slowed down for.
But this fire wasn’t mine
It was my neighbor
burning brush
My relief flares high like the time I heard an ambulance wailing up the road and my hands clutched at my body and my mind raced
Are they coming for me?
Like every hungry thing to the scream of a struggling hare
Are they coming to take what’s left of me.
I’m distracted by a chickadee
Who blazes bright through the smoke, singing
It swings from a slender twig, so small
It’s barely there
But it’s whistle wipes the whole place clean.