THE GRANITE STATE

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

Wildfire smoke from western Canada settles in the atmosphere in Franklin [New Hampshire] on Friday evening. Wildfires from western provinces of Canada brought smoke to the Northeast, where an air quality advisory last weekend included central and western Massachusetts, all of Vermont and northern New Hampshire. (Daniel Sarch/The Laconia Daily Sun photo August 19, 2024)

My Dad remembers 
Dust on snow in the 1930s
Drifted cross-continent from the Plains
 
But he doesn’t remember early 
Wildfire smoke from Canada
Locking the mountains in haze
 
Every summer now
Dimensionless white days
Hot-hued sunsets, red moons 
 
At 96, he sighs, resigned
We ignored the elements 
At our peril and now 
 
Air is visible, Water speaks in drowning tones
And Fire strips us down to Earth
Down to the granite state

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley writes from New Hampshire, known as the “Granite State,” where the White Mountains are currently engulfed in Canadian wildfire smoke. This morning she asked her 96 year-old dad if he remembered wildfire smoke earlier in his lifetime. He replied: “No, but I do remember dust on the snow when I was a child during the Dust Bowl.” Melanie is a naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, andFinding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had two previous poems published in the New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” Her poems have also been featured on nature-oriented websites.