Poems by Laura Saint Martin
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The Naming of Brush Fires
by Laura Saint Martin
From Canary Fall 2020
Laura lives and raises butterflies on a flood plain below the San Gabriel mountains of Southern California, former home of vineyards and citrus groves.
The sky is just an ashtray, hot-boxed mountains
mantled as wizards, our swamp coolers dystopic
with a roar that is anything but dull.
It starts as a Martian light, coppered shadows,
helicopters hung like stallions and toy
planes shitting orange. The fire soon stands
Godly, flags half the state, while we hide in cars
and gymnasiums, choking on hot snow. It looks
like it should rumble, but it whispers like water,
the only thunder our advance and retreat.
Brush fires are named for streets, campgrounds,
bodies of water. Why not name them for the victims,
the motorist whose death was the point of origin?
Why not for the leaf-shaped ash that traveled
twenty miles to collapse, little geisha, in my hand?
© Laura Saint Martin