Diffident day.
Heat-haze masking hills,
sun not yet broken through
inversion,
atmosphere boils unbalanced.
Smoke from distant
bush fires
billows upward,
adding pungency to
hydrocarbon overflow.
And ranging soot
soon falls down wind,
as delicate and short-lived
as snowflakes or moth wings
in your hand.
Drought
in high summer,
fire danger
extreme.
Imposing,
consuming,
demanding day
- diffidence abandoned -
as storm clouds meet
the brewing wind,
pollution fed and angry.
Tension citywide -
anticipation,
anxiety,
unspoken fear,
eucalypts as nitro conflagration.
One arsonist,
one random spark,
one arcing power line,
and all becomes a
Holocaust
in olive green.
James Gagiikwe © 2008
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Author notes
Eucalyptus oils are very volatile.
Are the doors physical or psychological?
Comments
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Whether physical or psychological, JG, the poet has gone through "doors of perception" in this one. Each line winds up a possible clock of doom toward its tensest point: those final six lines are chillingly imagined, especially the reps of "one" three times, climaxing in "all..."
When I was a little kid, I smelled, once, at a vial of eucalyptus oil and have never forgotten its exotic feel, its strangeness. It's nifty to see your poem using that "volatile" oil as its main conceit, its volatility-in-waiting, as in "Drought / in high summer, / fire danger / extreme..." And my favorite, nicely dictioned, balanced and ominous: "demanding day / - diffidence abandoned -...", with its off-rhyme and alliteration.
The whole poem brews danger, line by line; every word counts. I enjoyed this painting.
Lad
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