A Net I Seek to Hold the Wind

When the burning started in August, because it kept

its own schedule, it could be early without seeming eager.

On Point Reyes there was fire locking antlers with fire

and the fires at Big Sur had so broad a wingspan

they could soar for miles without flapping.

Inland, by Fresno, a fire slunk through pine wood,

shoulders bobbing piston-like above its back.

Antonio said it might last through December.

I said I wouldn't be survived, I mean, surprised by it.

In the foothills of the Sierra, long since blasted

by water from flumes to slurry into sluices,

the fires were simplifying nature down to granite.

The images showed black stumps of chalk fragility,

irrelevant stalks, and coincidental skeletons. 

There was a bear skull somewhere, and the thing

about bear skulls is just how narrow they are.

What's missing is muscle, and there's so much

missing, you find it hard to comprehend the force

of that jaw. There's a kind of religion in thinking

about things that have gone away. Take the sun,

for example, stashed away in smoke, its grey

glow cratering the high-noon ambiguities, or else

on that fluorescent Wednesday, a broken yolk

and oozing orange runnily. Temperatures overnight

hit rock bottom and stuck the landing. The fires

kept shovelling scenery into their bellies. I was

reading the poems in which love is a horseman,

spurring with fire and bridling with ice. California

was burning. I was glad I packed sweaters.