by Dick Altman
 |
British Columbia declares state of emergency amid ‘devastating’ wildfires |
Another headline, another smoke-filled
front page—the fires all seem so far away—
until they begin to feel as if they’re
pursuing you.
I see you, as a child, in the distance, feel you
roar down the block, run to you as if some
plaything—until your touch, in terror, turns me,
my fear, from that day on, drawing you to me.
*
Your essence, swallowing Quebec’s forests,
smothers, with belches of haze blood-red,
our cabin, your breath for weeks choking
throat, mind, sleep.
*
I watch you unfurl in the Jemez mountains,
across Rio Grande’s valley, to attack Los Alamos,
atom bomb’s birthplace, shaken that its labs,
caught in your maw, could blow apart earth.
*
Why do you stalk me, I ask, as I wake to find you
convulsing the next range over, armies of clouds,
raging, towering above me, for months, unstoppable,
our drought-riven tinderscape dissolving in defeat.
*
You come, next time, within a mile of me, no taunt,
but threat real to home and glade, lifetime of work,
bloom, joy—only your joy lies in taking it all away,
and spirits of rain, I pray, drown you to death.
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 appears in the first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry published this year by the New Mexico Museum Press.