I woke up and kept trying to rub the sleep out because everything seemed like a windshield all steamed up from heavy petting

but the dog was the only one panting

too close to the woodstove.

Maybe it’s just that thing going around “The eyes clogged with the dust of death”

Where everyone seems to have a smear of soot over their face that they can hardly see through.

I went outside and smelled that it was only smoke

So I stood in the yard while big gray ashes swung down and settled like sullied snow.

I do this thing to my life every few years

sometimes every night

an accident

that I like to play off as prescribed fire

who am I kidding though

I am not a field of blueberries

So really it’s just arson

And I know this because when I heard about the man who stood in the center of the intersection pouring gasoline over his head and struck a match

I thought

that was me

that was me

And I am not a Phoenix

But I will find a way to do this again.

And it’ll be as surprising as when I pass that house I pass every night

and see the old man in his lazy boy

yellow with the dim lamp and television flashing blue - all alone.

But one night I drive by a little early or a little late, right on time to see a woman sit, just feet from him, and vanish from my view behind a red geranium in the window as she lowers herself into her chair

and I realize he’s not the lonely man I pity every day - she’s been there beside him all along

and who am I to think I know anything about a life I’ve never sat with

never even slowed down for.

But this fire wasn’t mine

It was my neighbor

burning brush

My relief flares high like the time I heard an ambulance wailing up the road and my hands clutched at my body and my mind raced

Are they coming for me?

Like every hungry thing to the scream of a struggling hare

Are they coming to take what’s left of me.

I’m distracted by a chickadee

Who blazes bright through the smoke, singing

It swings from a slender twig, so small

It’s barely there

But it’s whistle wipes the whole place clean.