Hecker Pass, California
As the sunset filters
through the dim haze,
a red sheen—as from the gel on a spotlight—
is cast across the bright
desolation of the fires.
Through the phlegm of smoke, the lurid light
on the spare trunks of trees
burned a greasy black
is so post-apocalyptic
that everything still living pauses to shudder.
Steering through this bleak
landscape, I note the few things
that were not consumed by the blaze:
the thin strip of grass still alive
between the highway and the fire break,
or the glossy tops of half-burned oaks,
their lower limbs sooty,
their bottom leaves a crisp inert brown.
Everything else is reduced
beyond skeleton to carbon,
scorched to unearthliness, stark
and planetary in the flame-colored light.
Ash drifts across the windshield,
settling along the wipers,
without dust’s random grace,
or flour’s fine silty softness,
or sand’s heavy grit. Ash is only ash,
char-powdered remnant of the living,
immaterial, divorced
from purpose. Only the briquets of loss.
—
Lindsay Knisely lives by the sea with her wondrous family. She teaches writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Lindsay has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon, and a degree in Creative Writing from Oberlin College in Ohio.
