WEBVTT

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OK, some newer poems.

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I'm not sure how many of
these I will actually get to.

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This is the second poem of
reminiscence that I've written,

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and it refers to two fires.

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One was the 1977
Ventana Cone fire

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that burned through the
forest behind Big Sur,

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and the other is a
fire which happened

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in Minnesota last summer.

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Beautiful Dawn.

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We were three coming
over a ridge interrupted

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by stars in a truck of cold
fruit for drying for winter.

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Then one of us woke,
said "beautiful dawn,"

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and slept again.

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But the direction was
wrong and the hour,

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and when he and I rose
later, far into the light,

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it was unmistakable smoke.

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It took eight days to
reach that place at last.

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The backfire crew in
their yellow jackets

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ate gratefully of
the bruising fruit.

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Its sweetness ran
from their chins.

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They worked up canyon and
vanished, dripping flame.

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In the photographs,
our teeth, like theirs,

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still sweat with
dust and gone trees.

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Bandannas stiffen,
exhausted, around each neck.

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Now almost 20 years later in
the middle of night, I wake.

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This fire is 100 miles distant.

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I will never see it.

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By first light, the
winds will have shifted.

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The scent have vanished, as
the visible and invisible hours

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of those years have
vanished, consuming,

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consumed as that love did.

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But I breathe it in.

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I breathe my own
life in the dark,

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eat gratefully of a bruised
and half remembered,

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half still sleeping sweetness.

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