Night Fire

MINDING

Because the insomniac lilac

thrashed the house all night,

I cut it back this morning,

laying its wind-twitchy limbs on the lawn,

not for punishment but to release

the nested restlessness,

leaving only a few stumps,

each stub bruised lavender,

and a half-dozen limber branches

like the kind my mother

used to make me break

and bring to her for switches

whenever I was bad,

the sting still in my legs

these long years since,

bucking me awake like voltage.

PETTY EPIPHANY

The fire alarm makes bedlam

in the middle of some dream of running or drowning

and I wake finally in the street

carrying only electronic equipment,

everyone else in the building likewise rousted,

gawking like looters frozen in the getaway,

all of us waiting for the red-orange rush,

fire truck hoses full and sinuous,

ladders lifted halfway, ready,

until the all-clear and the cry of false alarm,

the old man next to me clutching just a photograph,

studying my salvage and laughing,

both of us knowing this was the real thing,

one of our lives in flames.

Over those hills

no one could walk:

those molten swells

that thread the dark.

Is it destruction we watch,

cathartic flame,

or a night city

viewed from a plane?

The amber-gilled

interior breathes soot

that rolls clear out

to where embers float

like porch-lit

suburbia, windows

warm with TV. Each fat

glow a homefire,

a trusted beacon

that won't be snuffed.

That shrill convergence

becomes downtown,

the flaring arms

of thoroughfares packed

with steamy hoods,

headlights fixing their cones

of white smoke,

the drivers unaware

of any tragedy, the grid

of streets warped

by some mysterious

heat. The city is

oblivious to pain.

It can't be reasoned with.

All night it flickers

the indifference

of office towers

and sleepless neon.

The street lamps hiss

their sodium.

This is normal for them.

They burn toward dawn,

they vanish where

the firestorm laid its

black path to greet us,

and moved on.