IN HOLLOWS OF MY LUNGS

by Dick Altman

Projected to double in size in the coming days, the Calf Canyon / Hermit’s Peak Fire continued to rage on May 2nd in northern New Mexico, threatening towns and villages and forcing thousands to flee. Now, erratic winds are pushing the flames closer to Mora and Las Vegas. —KUNM, May 2, 2022. Photo: View of the Calf Canyon / Hermit's Peak Fire from Santa Fe. Courtesy Of Shaun Griswold via KUNM.

on shores of my eyelids – remnants

of forest/plain/pastureland scorched to ghost –

not last year – not last month – as I write –

cell buzzes with warnings to evacuate –

nearly fifteen towns – in two counties

next to mine – since afternoon yesterday

                                *

gusts – without let up – race across

ground at sixty miles an hour – back

of throat feels I’m feasting on ashes –

smoke’s blackened cargo tumbles skyward –

cooler atmosphere whitens the boil –

if cows/horses/sheep/pigs/fowl notice –

who can say – who can say how farmers

corral/truck herds of livestock – in trailers

built for two – or maybe four – animals –

and to where – how decide who stays/goes

                                 *

homesteads – over a hundred – some

generations old – now dust – color of bone –

swirling – swirling around Sangre’s peaks –

this way – who can say this way – to bear/

deer/tarantula/snake – to bees and honey-

blooded flora – who to bore tunnel in sky

for birds on nest – for geese/ducks/owls

buzzards – if they survive – sideline until

the earth clears – party on barbecue

of their lives

                                  *

a controlled burn – preserving the forest –

they call it – human-struck match turned

into rogue torch – wind rocketing cinders

mile or more – no human way to keep up/

stay ahead – two blazes converging –

in marriage from hell – hell today – yes –

hell’s tomorrow beyond sorrow – black/

bleak/barren – no playbook to restart Eden –

no mind/memory trick to erase replaying

the present

                                  *

smell forest’s burnt flesh – fireplace’s scent

of pine/spruce/fir – except flesh gave up

the seasoned old age we cherish – its aroma

of solace/comfort/home – second life we –

with love – endow it – gone – gone up –

swallowed – in somebody else’s smoke

 

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, 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.

IMPOSSIBLE

by Diana Morley

A neighborhood destroyed by fire is seen as wildfires devastate the region, Thursday Sept. 10, 2020 in Talent, Ore. (AP Photo/Paula Bronstein via The Record Searchlight)

Two long days driving
through thick smoke
behind, ahead, behind
other fleeing drivers,
all going seventy, eighty mph
to get to air.
 
Diverted from inland to coast
from coast to inland—
fire grenades exploding 
in the hills alongside,
confusing the confused

on the road through 
Sweet Home
behind family
trailer homes
horse trailers
evacuating out of town 
till I reach a motel
where I need news— 

the radio 
assures me at 5 pm—

stock market up a tad

China, a valuable resource
for released Disney film—
‘an impossible resource to ignore.’

Author’s Note: I escaped the Alameda fire in Talent last Tuesday. For two days I thought my house was gone, then learned mine and one other neighbor’s survived on the block. That’s fire for you. My return won’t be to the neighborhood; it will be to both sorrow for my neighbors and joy for all those helping and planning for the future.

Diana Morley has published two books of poetry, one in 2019, one this year, been awarded honors by the Oregon Poetry Assn.  Lived in Oregon for 20 years, in Talent for 15 years. 

AT THE FOOT OF THE MOUNTAIN

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Trees scorched by the L.N.U. Lightning Complex fire, the second largest in state history, in Napa County, Calif., on Monday. Credit: Ian C. Bates for The New York Times, August 24, 2020

The forecasters tell us
More electrical storms
Are on the way
Like the ones last week
That started the fires
Burning the countryside
All around us,
Filling our air with toxic smoke,
And forcing us
To remain indoors
Where I sit right now
At the front window
Watching the trees across the way
Sway and bend
Ever more energetically,
Like atheletes warming up
For the Big Game.

On a normal summer day
Our street is a pedestrian throughfare,
Walkers pass by
From morning to night
In ones and twos,
Skateboarders, bikers,
Families with dogs,
But today, no one is out
No one to wave and smile
Back at me
Standing in the front window,
No passersby to shrug
And grin forlornly
About the fix we’re in.

We are packed
And ready to evacuate
Should the predicted storms
Ignite a fire on the mountain
That could rampage
Down the forested slopes
And threaten our community
With incineration.
We wait.

This is big. This is Weather.
This is Climate.
This is the whole interconnected
Systemic enchilada
Recalibrating on a planetary  scale,
Because, well, we know why...

The little girl who lives across the street
Is standing in her large front window
And when she spots me
She waves excitedly
As she always does,
And as I always do
I respond with equal delight.
A father and son
On roller skates and scooter
Zip past in the street,
The first I’ve seen today,
A fire truck drives by
In no particular hurry
As if to reassure the neighborhood
That attention is being paid,
The wind has died down,
The trees have ceased their calisthenics
For the moment at least,
But I remain at my post
On high alert.


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California. He podcasts at: thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

AT THE SIGHT OF THE WATERS

by Cally Conan-Davies

Flooding in Boulder, Colorado on Wednesday evening, September 11, 2013. Photo posted by brandish on Instagram @photogjake

(An Australian in Colorado relives . . .)

Bring your pillow, what comfort you can carry,
when you evacuate. You wont be home
any time soon.

Keep clear.

Revise your estimate. You will be caught
in a matter of minutes.
Pontoons and yachts are breaking from their moorings,
mangled hulls are hurtling downstream,
battering at the bridges.

Although we sunk our sandbags in the heart
of city streets, and braced against the waters,
the city’s pride— its cafes, party-barges—
powers down the river to destroy us.

The river is collecting all our junk,
rushing away with bathtubs and backyards,
broom-handles, buckets, pots and picnic benches.
Things become missiles when they’re in the flow.

Never cry for what can’t cry for you.

Bury the thought of what waters might unearth;
forget what you’ll recall—
stench, stains, stuff you never thought
would have to be replaced; and despite all
the waters everywhere, we must preserve
our water from the waters.

Find high ground because you cannot know
what lurks inside the waters – snakes, car doors, bodies
wrapped in tarps and blue pool-linings.

Below, backwater bubbles up through drains;
disease will come this way. Sever everything
you thought you knew of water, except for this:

when all revising up and down is done,
and levels finally marked, and mess is cleared,
and rivers shrink from us, and we look back
to praise the volunteers, think of the dead,
and honor the man who held a woman’s son
when the line holding her in his other hand went slack,

we’ll only know how far this flood has spread
when boy and man (see his eyes! how wild the water!)
drown again in the dream where he had caught her.


Cally Conan-Davies taught and practiced bibliotherapy in Melbourne, Australia before moving to the United States in 2012. Her poems have appeared, and are forthcoming, in Poetry, The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Raintown Review, The Sewanee Review and The Southwest Review, among others. She lives in both Colorado and Oregon.