The Tubbs Fire from Freestone - Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

The Tubbs Fire from Freestone

It was midnight and I could not sleep.
My window open and barely a hint of smoke, 
a gas grill, I thought, or the first fire 
this season in a neighbor’s wood stove.
Terrible winds were in the trees 
a death rattle shaking of 
the pull-down shades
in an open window.
I still did not know why
I could not, could not sleep 
in the yet ocean-moist autumn air.
 
The next morning I woke to a world
now bone dry and strange, oddly metallic,
a coppery sky and its dull shining. 
I took a photo of that eerie color
escaping the clouds and burning
into my consciousness. 
I drove inland as I always do for coffee 
to spark-plug the day. And I saw it, 
and pulled over. Blood orange
the sun as I had never seen before. 
It scared me the way heat-
lightning did that first time,
of no warning and not knowing
what it was.
 
I took another picture of that
sun, red siren of warning,  
signaling an already charred
County and its remains,
its kiln dried bone fragments,
skeletons of an old world. 
A choking smoke
beginning of this other!
 
It will take years and lifetimes
to sift through the black presence:
 
the raku-glazed shards,
the inky charcoal earth, now toxic,
the fire bombing of treasures,
landmarks exploded, and everywhere 
cars are deader than doornails.
 
We are all breathing-in melted electronics.
whole stoves, refrigerators, computers,
plus bibles, trees, dead birds. Whole libraries 
vanish into our lungs along with the deer.
Black clouds of ash descend
as entire neighborhoods
become unfamiliar, are bequeathed
to the bravery of first responders
still evacuating residents, and
their animals, and fighting fire.
Ambulances scream: a horrible
midnight parade that went on until morning.
Freeways packed, all the way to San Francisco!
A trauma stained beginning of that day
begins a collective story of dying and rising 
together for years, companions of that ash.
 
	- Judith Stone