I wrote "this ash" as I watched ash fall over our valley, leaving the last remnants of what the McKinney Fire had destroyed forty miles to the south. The first fire season that I lived in Oregon (6 years ago) I wiped ash off of my truck and brushed it off my horses without much thinking about what it actually was. Now when ash blankets our farm, where it may have come from is all I can think about.
THIS ASH
Smoke climbs the horizon along our south pasture,
a pallet of browns and grays driven by a straight-line wind until
it tumbles over the mountain range and spills
across the thirsty valley like a
carefree child down a hill.
Forty miles from here,
rural homes and small towns are
burning up and floating away
in silence.
(I must confess to you that calling it
silent is a lie -
wildfire is preposterously
loud, a gulping, snarling, ravenous
beast but it would seem the question we ask about
falling trees and the availability of a listening ear applies
to flaming trees and burning
houses and the interest of
a newsman’s
camera.)
But ashfall is quiet, no matter
how many ears are available to collect
the grief
that might screech and howl and cry out
from these tiny pieces if only they could deliver
a message from whom they once belonged.
Old photographs
stacks of mail,
dolls and dresses and the hem of a hand-me-down skirt
painted walls and finger nail polish
foot-worn stairs and pen marks on door frames
and a truck with
the keys in the ignition and
the leather collar of a faithful
dog in the passenger seat
and the blue plaid shirt and a walking cane and a veteran's cap.
Now they are all floating,
far and wide and silent silent silent like
hot, soft snow adrift
in a copper sky,
painting cars and hair and rooftops,
sidewalks and streets of a town they've never touched til now,
the rumps of cattle and
the taut skin of ripening tomatoes and
the inside of a stranger's lungs, having ridden in
on a breath and I wonder
if this ash clings
to the notion of existence until
there’s nowhere to go but
a dustpan or a rag or a vacuum bag,
swept from places still claimed by the living,
and there, perhaps,
with a sigh,
go cold.
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