Tinder Box
Bugle weed and bee-blossoms
catch the sparks and pass the flames
lifted by the dry Santa Ana breeze,
from black cottonwood to blue oak,
down to the shrubs of the chaparral.
The wind raises burning embers,
fireballs like giant orange poppies,
until a mass of burning sagebrush
on the hills becomes the raging torch
which no one can put out.
There are five roads leading out of Paradise,
from highways to a one lane goat path.
Neighbors wake each other with knocking,
stumbling in the dark through smoke and mayhem,
honking cars and the calls of sirens.
They leave with nothing, no spoons,
no combs, no dishes, no pills.
Fire trucks dot the landscape,
helicopters dip through the sky,
evacuees run down the streets,
their sweating sour skins
escaping the ovens of their homes,
seeking refuge in a cooling lake
and further south in Malibu, the icy sea.
Left behind is deadwood, dirt roads,
charred timber structures,
blackened hills, the warm and warped
remains of mobile homes
with all the hope burned out –
smoldering empty acres,
singed cats and dogs, wandering deer,
nickering horses
all fleeing toward the coast –
A disheveled owl shuffles,
cleaning her feathers in the sand.
A pet camel sits and blinks
by the steps of a lifeguard hut,
waiting for fresh water, for rescue
this hazy morning on the beach
under the reddest of skies.
Marie-Louise Eyres received her MFA in 2020 after a brain tumour diagnosis in 2018. Her work can be found in Stand, Agenda, Acumen, Modern poetry in Translation, Poetry Magazine and Portland Review. Her micro, When We Lived in Los Angeles was published in 2021 by Alien Buddha, and Wolf Encounters is due late 2022 from Maverick Duck Press.
Note: This poem was highly commended in the 2019 Bridport Prize and appears in that year’s print anthology.
Bhutan Pines
I‘d spotted the Harry Potter door
between the houses patterned
from the margins of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts
but, somehow, they had eluded me.
I had walked the park every day for over
a decade before I clocked them by the gate.
Each time I took the kids to the swings
or herded them to and from school,
we had marched past them, or under them,
massive, straight things, bare to their canopies,
discreetly leaning into the low branches
of the brasher trees around them.
Their needles don’t glitter and prattle on the breeze
like other leaves, just touch a little and whisper.
Now that I’ve seen them, I will listen more closely.
Jonathan Edis is a dad, lecturer & osteopath in London. He’s in several poetry groups & a rep for Forest Hill Stanza. He’s been published by Ink Sweat & Tears, & was highly commended in the AUB Poetry Prize 2022.
The Light Gatherers
That year we all collected light. Stuffed it into
bags and pockets, hoarded the dawn in cellars,
frightened that supplies would ebb away.
It grew profusely in a summer starved of rain,
spread buttery pools on road and hedgerow.
Spiders wove it into webs, birds built radiant nests.
Dandelion clocks were glitter-balls, rabbits fizzed
in the dark. We harvested the ripe crop, stacked
the golden sheaves, a stash to last the winter.
Mice nibbled light until their bodies shone.
Through long cold months we fed it to the cows
until they were beacons in the grey fields
and lit their own way to the milking-sheds.
The light for you was palliative, would not cure.
But we’d saved enough to keep you strong
until the following Spring, when buds threw
their shutters open again and the old light
flickered briefly, then quietly slipped away.
Kathy Miles is a poet living in West Wales. Her fourth full collection, Bone House, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2020.