The Ashes Are Still Hot

Today's poem brings a renewal of a frightening childhood memory.

I couldn't have been very old when this incident occurred, but the memory of it is still vivid.

The fire seemed to spring up suddenly along the railroad, the flames were threatening our house ... we had no running water, no telephone ... no fire department, as a matter of fact.

We stood and watched in horror. Then, suddenly, the fire seemed to veer away. It was over. We had survived.

The poem:

THE ASHES ARE STILL HOT

When a white-hot summer sun

hangs high in a cloudless sky,

when it must be thought

there can be no more burning

in this poor punished land,

there comes the crackling,

leaping, lurching dance

of the very flames of hell,

consuming sere weak willows

along the thirsting creek,

leaping to fence-line elms,

sending their leaves towering

like swarms of angry hornets,

smoke and fire entwining

in an eerie, deadly spiral

from which rain the hot seeds

of more on our shingled house.

We stand there in the garden,

my grandmother praying, and I,

a child of only four, crying.

Wind, born of the fire itself,

where there has been no wind

for long, dry, dragging days,

snatches up the pitching flames,

takes them away from the house.

My grandmother sees a miracle,

but to me it’s a nightmare, for,

see, the ashes are still hot.

©

1997

(originally published in Block's Magazine)

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Today's word: towering