by Dick Altman
in Northern New Mexico
 |
| Wildfire near Tres Piedras New Mexico grows to over 1,800 acres —Santa Fe New Mexican, June 28, 2026. U.S. Forest Service photo. |
Firefighters Mourn 3 Fallen Comrades as Blazes Ravage Utah and Colorado. Fires are raging in the arid Southwest after a warm winter. Forecasters say the fires may grow rapidly, and parts of Colorado have been ordered to evacuate. —The New York Times, June 28, 2026
I feel the old anxiety,
my pulse rising,
as the season’s first fire
expresses an unbridled
appetite for destruction,
exploding in three days,
from thirty acres
to seven hundred,
and still uncontained.
Grab your things,
crews yell,
hammering
on the front door,
and get out now!
How many times,
I ask myself,
must this story
repeat itself.
I watch,
across the valley,
swathes of
tall pine,
go from years
of glorious growth,
to barren shiny char,
in a matter of hours.
It shatters my heart,
when I think
of how I devoted
so much of my spirit
to nurturing
a conifer forest
up here on my home’s
bluff.
And all of its beauty,
decades in the making,
lost forever,
in a single bolt
of predacious light.
Nightmares
of flame
plague my sleep,
whenever
a blaze begins
to devour
a nearby landscape.
Am I next,
repeats in my mind,
over and over.
Evacuate!
The word
riddles me
with fear
and helplessness.
Replant
my life,
as if a cindered
forest.
Could I summon
the strength.
Force myself
to forget the home
I built,
the arboreal
children
I rear
over decades.
Evacuate!
To a tomorrow,
unknown,
uncertain,
voracious,
I weep to myself,
beyond
all reckoning.
Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, and others here and abroad. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 300 poems, published on four continents.
