After the fire acres of chimneys,
spires speak of flattened lives,
and now so much accounting to do:
Who lost what, whose home was saved
and where on earth will everyone live
for life to go on, and who wants to live
in this hellhole now, reroute around
the desolation to reconstruct some degree
of normalcy.
One friend’s home gone, now renting
in the South Bay. Others? Those without means?
Those with mean insurers?
Those arbitrary, fickle fourteen fires
deemed fiendish, consuming all they met
along the path the winds took them,
helpless to stop gorging.
Don’t we all choose survival? Even fires?
Opportunity came to let two fires meet
and exhaust each other into ash,
like a snake swallowing its own tail.
When our resident evacuees
returned home they put slices of bread
in the toaster they had willingly left behind,
and the toaster said, ‘Wow, really?’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephanie Noble’s poems have been published in a number of journals including the Atlanta Review, IthacaLit, Pilgrimage Magazine, DoveTales–Writing for Peace, and the Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2010-2016. She was a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee. Stephanie teaches insight meditation in San Rafael, California and is the author of Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living. She has been married for 48 years to the artist Will Noble. They have four children and five grandchildren. You can follow her meditation blog at stephanienoble.com.