by Dick Altman
Four killed in helicopter crash after assisting with East Mesa Fire
—Santa Fe New Mexican, July 17, 2022
Northern New Mexico
I once believed the high
desert immune to fire.
Until I watch in terror a blaze
in the Jemez Mountains,
west of me, nearly consume
Los Alamos’ atomic city.
*
And so spin the blades
and up the chopper rises,
as if lofted by the very flames
it douses again and again
with water by the bucketful.
Until its cargo of four, lives
with every pass in peril,
points wearily for home.
*
Never thought a fire 20 miles
east, ignited in April, would
refuse to go out until mid-June.
We may not have much water,
but we have countless mountains
of tinder eager to torch earth,
sear and drought-riven.
*
And so we resort to birds
(and planes) to siphon water
from a distance. After awhile,
the droning pulse of copters
infiltrates dreams. Smoke,
from the moment you awake,
is a never-absent cup
of acrid reality.
*
And today’s bird? Had I felt it
thrumming overhead? Before
a few seconds of downdraft—
will we ever know?—transforms
it from an angel of life into one
of death. And blades that morph
into wings, caught in gravity’s net,
plunge to the bottom of a sea of air.
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where,at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.