Fire

On July 5th, this happened to the home we built on the farm in 2010:

All people and pets are safe. No other homes or structures were impacted. In an area known for wildfire — it was not that. It was an accident.

We lost art, appliances, furniture — things we had created and chosen and lived with for many years. Our tenants lost all their belongings. They were not at home at the time. Loretta and I were not living there; we had moved to the manufactured home on the farm a year earlier.

Needless to say, I am in a fugue state and very close to tears most days — but taking things one day at a time. These days are filled with men in hazmat suits ripping things up and carting them away. The house is being gutted to the studs.

Yes, it is bad. But it could have been a whole lot worse, and for that I am grateful.

I’ve been writing in bits and pieces during this time. Mostly in the morning, before the heat sets in. This poem showed up while my mind tended to other matters:

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After the Fire

You cannot touch anything without soot

covering your hands

and clothes

and nostrils.

It is nothing like wood smoke from a campfire

No.

It smells pungent and sickly

like burned plastic and melted rubber.

Occasionally you encounter something

and you think

“Maybe this can be saved?”

So you set it aside.

Maybe…

if only the etched soot could be wiped away or somehow extracted

If only it didn’t reek of that smell.

You say aloud:

“These are just things.”

There is the Hawaiian quilt that I gave Renee when she was sad,

and the stained-glass sun and moon that Loretta picked out for our window.

There are JP Sarlande’s watercolors of barns and tractors in Upper Lake,

And all the ceramic tiles that we made for the ledge...I called them “All things Permaculture”

Tiles depicting things that we wanted to bring to the farm:

Sunflowers, lady bugs, sage, quail.

We did not make one for fire

But it came anyway.

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That’s it for now. More soon.

—Denise