Fire and Rain

Poems for when the climate meets your memory and your skin

Photo by Mariano Baraldi on Unsplash

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From the end of winter all the way through summer and late fall, I’m mostly holding my breath and waiting for the rains to start again. There are reasons for that, inside and outside my skin.

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WILDFIRE                                                                                      2018


What I know about smoke:
	That it rides the air, in wisps, in molten clouds.
	That it permeates hair, clothes, skin,
	   whatever opens pores to let it in –
	   sometimes subdued by stillness,
	   then roused again, in a shaken shirt or dampened hair,
	   insistent with the stink of deadened fires.
	That a trace of it, on a cold morning’s air,
	    can be a comfort, hearth-memory,
	    a story from summer camp.
	That more than a trace jangles mammals’ nerves:
	    danger, run.
	That it can carry, for a thousand miles,
	    the ashes of a life consumed
	    and spread them in a charred and clinging film
	    over a life in progress.
	That rainfall rinses it from the sky.
	That we still smell it, even when it drifts away.

What I know about a grown woman’s childhood:
	That it rides her body, in whispers, in silent screams.
	That it permeates dreams, loves, stories,
	   whatever opens pores to let it in – 
	   sometimes subsiding in a moment’s nowness,
	   then waked again, by aimless thought or half-remembered voices,
	   flinching with the hiss of wounds unbound.
	That a trace of it, in a holiday or traded story,
	   can be a comfort, hearth-memory,
	   a snapshot from summer camp.
	That more than a trace jangles the soul’s nerves, 
	   then the mammal’s body: danger, run.
	That it can carry, for ten thousand days,
	    the memories of a life consumed
	    and spread them in a charred and clinging film
	    over a life in progress.
	That tears rinse it from the present.
	That she still lives it, even when it burns away.

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THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME                                               2022


This would be a good time
for a change in the weather

for bitter winds to slow and draw some deep moist breaths
for arid frosts to melt and dream of mercy

This would be a good time
for a season of night-long rains

endless and soft from sundown to dawn
silently tapping stone-hard earth to loam

rinsing ash and dust from weary air
to compost in the soil like tears.

This would be a good time
for mild days swelling warm around noon

for long still days when soil can catch its breath
and welcome the night’s rainfall, welcome seed

for days whose noon heat quickens root and leaf
then eases cool again – no sear, no spark.

Not to say there is any forecast
for a change in the weather

not to say we would agree on how to change it
if the change was ours to make, only to say

this would be a good time.

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Some years ago a wildfire blazed through the town I grew up in, and burned almost all of it to the ground.¹ At the time I hadn’t been back to that town for nearly ten years, and hadn’t lived there for close to forty; I hadn’t ever been able to feel much at home there, and I’d stopped trying as soon as I could. But in the midst of shock and anguish for survivors, and gratitude and long-distance support for the groups and organizations helping out, I found myself breathless with grief for my own, private loss. The landscape of my childhood was ashes, on the earth and on the wind. This truth was graphically brought home when the smoke from that particular wildfire traveled several hundred miles south to hang over the city I live in now. Every time I went outside, I was breathing in the ashes of a life I’d left behind.

Of course thousands of people suffered losses far more immediate and devastating. Of course the town had been changing slowly, as towns do, for years after I left and before the fire came. Of course I still — for better and for worse — have my memories of the childhood I spent there. And of course there has been fire after fire since then, in my state and in other states and around the world, including the ones that are raging this summer.² And I still have a visceral reaction to the smell of smoke in the air.

Anyhow, after that particular catastrophe, I wrote “Wildfire.” “This Would Be A Good Time” came some years later, written (again) during fire season and also in response to political firestorms that never seemed to die down; that’s another kind of weather that shows few signs of changing.

I do believe the rains will come again, though. I believe in rejuvenation; I’ve seen it happen. I believe our memories stay with us, the ones we pull up easily and talk about freely and the ones we don’t. I believe we need our own memories and each others’, if we’re going to figure out how to contain the fires and live into the next change in the weather.

1. If you know or want to speculate about what town I grew up in, please keep the knowledge or speculation to yourself; I’ll delete Comments from anyone who gets specific or insistent on this topic. The deal I have with myself, so I can feel safe-ish being this much online, is to keep my surname and my personal geography as private as I can. Thanks for helping me keep that deal.

2. If you’ve been wondering how and where to contribute to wildfire victim relief this summer, this Note from fellow Substacker Rachael Raine Rivers would be a good place to start.