California Fires - 2025

My heart is breaking as the fire wins, An elemental only doing What its nature demands: Eat, heat, repeat. Some spirits walk on As the fire fights Any efforts to defy its nature. We count, one by one, those escorted by fire To the edge of understanding: bitter taste of pain on one side, On the other, wholly unimaginable to us. Holy. And unimaginable. We are slow to learn their names, To understand the holes Burned in families, communities. The wind is doing what it's designed to do: Feed the fire, to do what its nature demands: Eat, heat, repeat. My heart is doing what it's designed to do: Break. Break, for the powerful presence Of absence.