Burn! Burn!

We see houses as orange skeletons in dark neighborhoods on TV screens.
We see smoke rising and spreading like ink as if the earth were leaking.

As if the stuff of our world had released
all of its dark thoughts.

(The grasses giving in and going up.)
(The trees giving in and going up.)

Flames erasing Fall’s brilliance with a greater brilliance.
Racing up hillsides as an irresistible madness we all delight in.

Chanting “Burn! Burn!” under our breaths
with our fists clinched while the wind whips
everything into a frenzy.

We say, “Oh, that’s a pity!
But then want to run through a burning field
for our lives with everything we’ve got.

We say, “Oh, those poor people!”
But then conduct the fires from our couches
so that everything will burn and be alive again.

The headlines say “California is Burning!”
and we know the black landscapes are coming.
A world reduced to the bare bones of carbon
grays and shadow.

We want to stand on a bank or hilltop
and look out over a wasteland.

—A moon sparkling on a river,
dark ruins set against a night sky,
the last of the ashes floating down like snow flakes.

“Apocalypse isn’t so bad,”
we’ll tell ourselves and shrug.

Then move on to something else.