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| Plenty of people in The City, including this man walking on Market Street, donned a mask Friday due to bad air quality as smoke from the Camp Fire in Northern California drifts down into the Bay Area 2018. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner, November 10, 2018) |
After the fire fractures its invisible
borders, the air going south becomes
a death powder. The Anna’s hummingbirds,
white-breasted nuthatches, the western
meadowlarks all disappear as if the atmosphere
pushes them indoors. Ominous vapors grab
oranges on their bushes with fingers visible
as ghosts in a dimly lit room. The sun, our lady
of perpetual light, glares down through a haze,
murky blue. Nothing wet. Or shiny. The dirt
tries to move, no wind, no dust, only rocklike
rusty brown with cracks. Everyone knows this
feeling, a drought, field drained of water,
perdition place of nightmares. Here it is: our
dread of Hades, right outside the window, real
enough to taste, to smell.
Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet, a Literary Confection. She also has poems forthcoming in I-70 and 3Elements. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And the healing power of anything as beautiful as poetry.