It didn’t used to be like this, we say,
dry and windy and blowing so hard. Today
I saw branches fallen on a parked car’s
hood. No wonder we’re hearing of so
many wildfires. Without rain, even safe
towns like ours are becoming tinderboxes.
Anyone with a match can do it.
We’re not the desert, we say, or the mountains,
far from the Hollywood Hills. But nights
our certainty drops away as trees
take up the baleful song of the wind.
We didn’t start this, we say, but we
permitted, vote by vote, that ghastly breath
to dry every drop of protection from our bones.
.
Thomas R. Smith
.