Fires burn in the hills around the city.

Smoke curls down like a deadly snake to choke

and take....

I watch and know the knowing....

Our yearly ritual fire and then

a strange voice whispers an invocation,

commonplace yet unknown to most,

this grace...

There is a pathway of unheard fractured voices

that yearn and cry out their poetry...

Catch their words...quickly now!

Words fade as fast as fireflies in a fire.

My ears stretch to their insistence,,,the

poet's pain of knowing.

Their insistence, we are not alone