Playing With Fire

My love and I are planning a trip

into the forest, where we’ll be,

honored houseguests of greenest geology:

and I will sing sweet campfire stories of fine dust and good company,

leaving California behind.

The Golden Coast lit up by blazing

sirens of force, caught up in their hot impunity.

As we book our tickets, she says to get insurance,

so our plans won’t go up in flames.

But when we get to the campground,

I will swim beneath those red woods,

I will give them to my dearest,

these tender trees that survive each fire/

to make a home beneath their boughs,

and tell our stories over s’mores.

Our vacation: a mirage I see on the pavement,

beneath each heat wave’s satin sun.

‘hottest summer on record’, again.

‘worst wildfire season’, again.

while I have to push beg buttons just to cross the street,

and find some shade to rest in.

She coughs on the call, quietly.

the smoke billowing toward her to cook her lungs,

as bombs blow up over Ukraine

she whispers stories to feed the flames;

And her voice sounds like:

the felling of forests-

the fear of fire-

flirting with fascism-

fluttering of firearms,

My friends fight for housing, amid a temperature spike,

and I keep wondering if the next body I see on the street

will be their scorched bones cooling on concrete -

She dials me in a fit of fervid coughs,

the forests fall from Bolsonaro’s edicts,

and pressures erupt to protests in town

as cinders catch in her chest.

An asthma attack takes her to hospital-

the bill is as high as ambient temperatures.

in the parking lot where I stand;

my phone is hungry for her call:

Nine-thousand, two hundred fourty-eight houses – gone.

Homelessness holds her court and judges;

wildfire feeds the waters we had/ planned/ to visit-The flames flicker, luff, and lull.

I take a breath/ clear of smoke/

save these hands from scoring with fire.

and wish,

know, that art. - art must snuff it:

the burning of more than trees.