INFLAMMATION
PALISADES FIRE JANUARY 2025
What I don’t know,
the lick of fire
on my shoulder
as my hair
becomes a torch.
That singed deer,
a yearling,
standing startled
and alone,
the flames behind her
like a halo.
I don’t know the pain
nor does the man
with the camera
who caught her,
so he and I, so we
could know
what we can’t know,
because
the embers rained
down upon her
not us
although we
set these fires
with our own hands,
moment by moment,
by our inflammatory lives.
What words can we or I add to your heart wrenching cry, dear Deena? Only to say we have been here before and not learned, not then, and not yet. Only to quote the epigraph ("I will take with me the emptiness of my hands/What you do not have you find everywhere " by WS Merwin) and a link to words of a poem i offered after the Lahaina fires, not so damn long ago, too soon to have forgotten...and yet... https://poets.org/poem/somewhere-everywhere with love, margo
body activation, heart beats, heart breaks, tears come and the awe of life continuing with it. thank you.