Prairie Fire

1. Huntington (1948)

It was the smell of burnt grass that came through
as I watched TV,
heard the snap of grasshoppers that burned.
I could taste the smell,
taste of blackness, part sour, part bitter,
with the sharp recall of late summer days
as a boy.

I don't recall the occasion of the fire I remember,
just the sour smell
and black earth and white ash that came after,
and rain that turned soil already blackened
still blacker.

Black water ran down out of fields into gutters,
and streams that flowed
normally the color of mud from the same fields plowed
early spring and late fall had turned dark
as a witch's blood;

and ashes had worked up white suds where dark water fell
from a twelve inch pipe that was the sewer
and the suds were flaked
like ice cream with chips of dark chocolate
that my mother loved.

Root beer could also raise suds
and was especially good when drunk with vanilla ice cream.
We ate our dogs black with soot and sour with mustard
and could smell on hands
our latest experience of fire: our own singed hair.

2. Himes Street (1941)

I remember the chickens I plucked,
how the feathers stuck,
soft and wet,
to my hands like the smell.

Annie would chop
off the head and the chicken flop
and plow about the yard spraying blood
in the way a dog
will roll and wallow in scent.

Now, eyes half shut
with lids from both bottom and top,
the head would close
and open, close and open its beak,
and the body float
when I pushed it neck down in a pail.

Then came the smell
of hair being singed over flame
and I felt ashamed
at my treatment of a pet I had fed
and myself would eat.

3. New Haven (1962)

I recall a house that was gutted,
how flames poured out
as firemen chopped holes in the roof to pour water in.

I remember the smell of burnt shingles,
the sting of smoke,
and my fear when the roof
began falling.

To such a fire
the bodies of my parents were fed
and so to God
my body is assigned
and will come.

The child that is in me
is strong
and recoils from flame.

I think of Grandmother and God.

I repeat her name
and pull blankets up over my head
like protecting sod.