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.
