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Sylvia Sensiper

The Sky turns grey with Smoke and We scour online maps & Watch Evacuation Lines
draw closer, wondering how much longer we’ll call this home

I pull out ragged verbena browned
and old, it won’t make it through 
this heat—and my body
tightens, bracing against 
the odor of the garden breeze
a cringe, an armoring,
my nose a mighty sensor 
of changing winds.
A wave of flames
enters my mind
drone images from
a google search dancing
across the nearby ridges
orange reddish fire
the same color the sun burns 
searing through the smoke
in the fading afternoon.
I close my eyes & Blink.

I ready a box from 
a short list I’ve made 
marriage certificate 
house insurance, a sepia 
toned image. 
My mother’s mother
stares into the camera 
hands on her hips, a big hatted 
power pose
I know she weathered
The Great Depression-- 
this soldiering on must 
be in my genes.
A change of clothes, 
my mother’s string of pearls
then a pause---
what else do we take
if the robocall comes?

We live in the golden state 
but two years past
Paradise was lost-- 
stunned by flames 
there was no way forward
and no way back--
now even the purple bloomed 
crepe myrtles drift
in this time of diablos &
I feel the vise upon my chest 
and the deep depression of
yellow skies 
the ash of dreams
covering every car.

There should be 
mosquitos and
incessant crickets not 
this frantic drumming
of thundering disturbance,
ecstatic lightening
and the stalled, stale heat 
of early evening. 
Even the moon, like the sun, 
has shifted her appearance.
A haze rounds the perimeter
(as if she wants to be bigger)
and she glows and shimmers through 
the saddest of nights.
 

Sean Ewing Crimson_Elegance.jpg

THE COURTSHIP OF WINDS

© 2015 by William Ray

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