Painting with the Firebrush
(published in We Are the West:Embers by Twenty Bellows)
The sky has been filled with smoke for days and
everything is painted in apocalypse red; the lighting
is just right; so revealing; the irony of oils
and acrylics; art can be so destructive.
Every landscape is a landscape of longing.
Every landscape longs to be who she once was;
a body beneath the pavement; she could be
a Goddess, but she’s burning.
We’re burning, and we can’t keep pretending
we don’t feel it, aren’t coughing up forests.
We hold in our lungs 500 years of suppression and carbon sequestration; the Front Range is burning;
a leviathan of wildfire, wildfire, wildfire;
it all becomes so passive, so present;
show up to work through road closures and
slurry bombers; just don’t open the doors.
How do you pack a burn bag? What can you carry?
How can you pack a lifetime of memories?
Will it be light enough to run when the time comes? How can you fit every working hour spent
trying to keep a roof over your head?
Every house is a bonfire waiting to happen.
How do you pack a body bag? Is there
anywhere safe enough to bury your dead?
Everyone is a refugee in the making. The ocean
is rising; coastlines are disappearing.
Artists cannot render a new world fast enough.
Ekphrastic is the practice of remembering. We live
in a time of transition; the-great-acceleration.
The new world will be inconsistent with our expectations; a terrible act of improvisation.
The land is a body locked in another body.
May the flames finally set her free.
It’s all so fragile, and strangely beautiful.
