When the Sun is Orange

It’s so smoky; the world is orange and grey.

A town burned down 80 miles away, to the ground;

We put masks to our faces, my chest heavy,

Involuntarily smoking now;

I see the particles embedding themselves in my children’s lungs:

They cough, vomit, cry, cough again. But we,

Lucky ones,

We still have our homes, our belongings, our lives.

Our city is standing, shrouded in the smoke from

The fire that burned a town to the ground.

The orange sun is strange, dusk at noon,

Challenging the smoke with its warmth: surprising.

Autumn hues, wrong, set the balance off kilter,

And the smoke continues to swirl, stuck, an apparition

Of our future perhaps, but real, this is no image.

Our ground is literally burning away beneath our feet

And we still deny, deny, deny.

Orange sun, grey smoke, burning breaths,

Search for bones and remains: where is the rain?

We lack appreciation for the droplets of water,

Praising blue skies and wispy clouds.

But when the rain refuses to come and blue turns to smoke

And smoke turns to death, all we do is

Close our eyes and yearn for change.

——————

We are on Day 8 of being engulfed in wildfire smoke from the Camp Fire which burned down Paradise, a small town about 80 miles north of us, and is now considered to be the most deadly California wildfire on record. The air quality levels peaked over 343 today, harzardous, and our normally blue skies are grey, orange, hazy, and thick. The fire is still burning, and the wind is still blowing all of the smoke to our sity, where is sits, stagnant: the smell and the feel of the world’s biggest bonfire at our doorstep.