Fire Season in the West

Summer’s last towhee grips the splintered fence chest red as a controlled burn then flits into wildfire haze —transmogrified forests pepper the membranes of our eyes blur the yard where I snip stubs of done marigolds and blinking back realize it’s ashes I’ve mistaken for flies eye-floaters it’s ashes of others’ lives falling to my forearms to my restlessness with garden scissors under a scarlet day-moon blistered sky —tonight when the new wildfires lay down in me each anxiety will flash like dry lightning how many acres this season? —I’ll work to dig the break the line to tamp down sparks as stars wither in the smolder of every engulfed home —I’ll repeat to myself this fact that certain trees do burn and survive charred like ponderosas —I’ll forgive the grasses that replace the trees