Fire Season

As the fire season ramps up and PG and E threatens to turn off the power to thousands of homes to help prevent them, and to keep themselves from liability, I am remembering last year's devastating Camp Fire in Paradise California. Students at Butte College and WordSpring Press put out a beautiful anthology of fire poems. I was pleased to have three poems and one photo included, and got to read there, with many others, some of them fire survivors in a very moving evening. Here are my three poems and the photos. Pelicans in a red sky over the San Francisco Bay.

Fire and Fury

We measure our days in smoke

Fires raging to the north of us

The south of us, the east

Particulate matter in the nose

The mouth

The lungs

The dreams of ash which overwhelm

our dreams of sleep

We measure our days in embers

from a thousand cigarettes,

phlegm from lungs greedily inhaling

Years piled up in mounds

of butts, heaps

of burning tires, rivers on fire

We measure our days in red running heat

pouring down suburban streets

Molten cars, homes, bodies, dreams

disrupted, blistered

The last residents of Pompeii

We measure our days in waves from above

pressing down the sky,

from below threatening the shore

Sunset orange with rhetoric

Polemic spewed by angry gods

Skies of pink fill the sailor’s heart

with visions

of bloated fish bellies floating

Chemical rivers

Plastic oceans

We now measure our days

in credible fear

of sear and flash

the mushroom blast

the last thing you hear

softly falling ash

President Pleasure Visits California*

Says from the steps of Air Force One:

It really is a pleasure

to join you here

in Pleasure -

Look! They named a town after me!

A real pleasure, if Pleasure hadn’t burned to the ground

a shame

so sad

Can you get it built back up by my next trip?

So you won’t be embarrassed by all the mess?

My namesake, Pleasure, yes a real shame

Where’s that governor?

Where’s Jerry?

And Gavin, he’s the new Governor you know

You folks who live here in Pleasure really need

to get going with the rakes

like the Fins, now there are some smart people

No burned down towns on their watch

They know how to manage a forest

Cold place Finland

So not sure how much pleasure

And they have reindeers; did you know that

Governor?

Like Santa, so that’s got to be fun

Here, let me give you a hug Gavin, spread

some Pleasure around

Feels good to help out

Remember, get out the rakes,

and maybe some snow, you ought to get some snow

Cover it all up; make it look good, you know

in the meantime

Well, it’s been a pleasure

Ha ha, get it?

Oh, and sorry about all the dead people

and what not, not good

Rakes, that’ll work

I like a great climate

Good to have this little chat

*Trump visited the town of Paradise California ground zero of the massive northern California wildfires that killed dozens and left thousands homeless. He got the name of the town wrong twice before being corrected by a member of the press.

Me with the Face of a Dog

Snug in white breathing mask

nose jutting out into the air

the way a dog’s does

Inquisitive

Anxious

Alert

Though all I smell is the inside of this dog face

A chemical smell

Protection

from invading particularity that began

as trees

or the redwood siding on someone’s house

Maybe a couch

A rug

An old dog kennel from behind the garage

Maybe an old dog

or other carbon-based being

drifting 200 miles

south to attack my nose

This coated face with the nose of

a dog, the snub nosed kind,

a pug

a shih Tzu 

or Pekinese

Someone’s pet now ashes

in the air

Someone

Ashes

Turning the sky to fire

The ocean to blood

The once warm earth

Cold as a grave

Some, they say, were saved

in swimming pools

or ponds

rivers, under the hose

Others tried and failed

their cars still out front

of what’s left of the house

Their cremation

no longer necessary

Ashes to ashes

Mud

How we will all wind up

someday

perhaps filtered for purity

through a white mask

covering the large-pored nose

of a god or goddess,

inconsequential deity

with the face of a dog

aloft in a red sky

clouded with dust

while stars are born

in some other part

of the universe

Going Forward by Going Back

Because I just started this, and I want to post some past poems, I'm giving you this one from Writers Resist in July of this year. It's from  my Life Observed series, as is the first one Woman Her world on Skids.

Solstice

By Dotty LeMieux

It’s delivery day at St. Vincent’s Dining Room
men unloading trucks with bread, canned goods, day-old
everything for the homeless
and the not-yet homeless
hanging on by the skin of their teeth,
the ones who have teeth
and the ones who only have the skin

Scruffy off-white hair,
long brown coat like a cape
swirling around bony shoulders,
gap-toothed smile, a man
picks bagels one, two, three
from a giant plastic bag open on the sidewalk

The sidewalk not crowded yet,
the bagel bag still fairly full,
the man in the brown cape-like garment
has his pick, takes his time choosing
plain, seeded, onion,
maybe a spicy cinnamon one
to summon the spirit of the Season

Face lit up with his choices, clutched
in his two hands as he starts across the street,
hair blowing around his face,
cape billowing out behind his slender frame,
he is transformed into a Romantic poet,

reciting odes
in a proper British accent,
to adoring listeners
gathered in the glittering firelight
of the local pub,
his hands gesturing freely,
accentuating the high points
of his lyricism

Back on B St., he strides in front of my car,
stopped now to let him pass, to watch
his coattails fly in his wake,
like autumn’s last leaves
swooshing around us, into the street, launched
by winter’s first insistent breath.

Welcome to my new blog Dotty LeMieux Poems and More. I will endeavor to keep up with my publishing, such as it is, and other news of note.

For today, delighted to be chosen for publication by the Mill Valley Literary Review.  Look for it this spring. And you can see my first poem, Fire and Fury,  up there now.

And to be included in the Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Here is the poem that appears there, first published in Gyroscope this year.

Woman her World on Skids                                               

Paused at the red light, I see her —

Urban traveler at a crossroads, 

waiting out the light

weighted by her world on skids behind her

Arms bent back holding the plastic

reins of flattened cardboard

bearing the world —

not aloft as Atlas —

but on folded boxes that can be opened

into shelter,

black plastic bags, the heavy kind

for cramming every bit of trash

you clear from your property

before you move in or everything

you call your own

as you move out

In her bags she has crammed husband

House, children now grown, job

in a bank or a store

or a factory in another state

nice clothes or rags

an apartment, tenement, old folks’ home

crazy house

the faraway lap of ocean

on foreign shore

wing of white bird soaring

I watch her adjust the weight, knuckling

gnarled hands into locked grip

Bearing the more private, the more precious, cargo

on her bent back not a bit

of slack in sinewy limbs, face taut as a fist, eyes

tight against unforgiving sun, not an ounce of wanting

to be here but with steadiness

because after all, she is moving

if not quite upright, at least, not quite

prone, and with purpose

As the light changes.