“Wildfire: in Response to Pádraig Ó Tuama.”

I wrote this last Tuesday night, after reading a new-to-me book of poetry by an Irish poet, and simultaneously rereading Amos 4 with friends from church…

and this emerged in response. In light of the terrifying American political landscape, I thought this makes even more sense than it did last week.

– – –

Wildfire: in Response to Pádraig Ó Tuama

Emerging from the fragile shelter of each other,

Seeing shocks of red hair and fair skin

Only made brighter and fairer by fluorescent light,

I am overwhelmed. I darken and grow cold,

Like some ancient star a galaxy far away.

I hear the ancient Hebrew words in my own voice!

I drown beneath the torrents of the river Justice

And hear the clamours for the cleanness of teeth

Still echoing on Ottawa’s streets today.

You wouldn’t know it from the gentle street I live on,

But the wildfire’s coming to sweep us away too.

Old Amos had it right. The vinedresser

Will speak truer words than those in three-piece suits.

I’m swept away by forty years of pelting rain,

By deconstruction and deregulation

Of social safety nets:

Our nets can’t catch fish anymore; they’re too full of holes.

Holes: young men with First Nations ancestry

Sit outside the Coffee Time in Parkdale;

Holes: a wizened woman weaves her way between the cars

At Foster and Pulaski in Chicago;

Holes: above the Arctic Circle, near the poles,

Are holes and gaps where icebergs used to be.

Now water fills the gaps to quench its thirst…

What fresh apocalypse will rend our veils?

What Thunberg voice will tear away our blackout blinds

And help us seek the holy higher ground?

Our sanctuary’s in each other’s arms.

Our sustenance, our root, is reciprocity,

For only by our earnest giving back

Can we be given once more to ourselves.