Fire in California

1966

I wish I didn’t remember
the hot Santa Ana winds
rattling the flimsy windows
my wisps of fine hair standing on end,
the car with the bullhorn
screaming through the neighbourhood
‘Get out—Pack up and Go’

My mother herding
six girls and a baby
into the Ford station wagon
she said,
‘Take the one thing
that means the most to you’
a lesson I took to heart
then and there 

I wish I didn’t remember
the oddly brassy yellow air
the hot sky raining ashes
the car wipers
slapping them back
I knew even then
they were someone else’s
precious things
clinging to our windshield

I wish I didn’t remember
the wild-eyed cats and dogs
the darting rabbits
the frightened deer
like us
running for their lives

1991

I wish I didn’t remember
the eerie otherworldly red sun
peering through a blackened sky
at three in the afternoon
arriving home
to my best friend
her husband
their two cats yowling
on my front steps
‘Oakland is burning’
they said,
‘Can we spend the night?’ 

Later,
everyone bedded down
yet wide awake
my baby girl
my two-year-old son
the cat the dog
I remember thinking,
everything
that is precious
and irreplaceable to me
is under this one
utterly flammable roof

2018

Last Thursday
I awaken from a deep sleep
to the powerful smell of smoke
I know in my very cells,
drifting in through the open window—
once again I’m hit
by a sudden choking feeling—
not from the smoke in my throat
but rather from unexpected
overwhelming love 

We are all
so achingly
vulnerable  

First published in The London Reader, 2019