Not far from where I am, the King fire rages.
Ruling, man-made, it tames the dry wilds
and rakes over our cradles and gardens.
It was waiting a long time to happen.
Conceived in a summer sky unforgiving,
sparked long before any September thoughts of arson,
the blaze was born of the need for renewal.
Brightly alive,
the King eats each and every bird nest and evergreen.
Blinding and blinded alike,
it is a mouth, devouring blue egg and seedling impatient,
eating and feeding, change incarnate,
all the while whispering
ten-thousand times over its
snap-crackle mantra,
the declaration of a wide-eyed being,
seething, like its victims,
reeling in ecstasy.

How many homes are caught in the blaze
not two valleys over?
Is it the instinct of the fire,
like us passing animals,
to turn anything to
FOOD?
All I can see,
and can't help but to breathe,
is the smoke left over from the heat beast's meal.
Soon
ash will be raining
in place of the water
now so needed.
As I pray for rain and watch the grey
drift like fog banks,
like foreboding ghostly hills,
the sun is lighting through the dense
in the afternoon,
in a slow waking morning.

Through the smoke
an orange beam of sunlight
falls at my feet