Fire Harvest

I was born in a land by the    
ocean, surrounded by palms;      
trees not native to the land.      
     
And bean fields & eucalyptus      
& pepper trees. And makeshift      
     
film studios in barns, paying      
the extras in coin realm, before      
the first World War, & talkies.      
     
And migrant workers in pickup    
trucks, with their straw hats      
& bandannas, heading out      
     
to the orchards & vineyards      
at daybreak, like twilight,      
and the valleys still murky    
     
with a low lying haze from      
smudge pots, to ward off the      
chill that set in each evening.      
     
‘Til morning when, even then      
you could see one’s breath      
in the air, that settles deep      
     
in the lungs, along with a      
faint sick of wildfire that      
had laid bare the hillsides,      
   
blocking onshore breezes      
from the ocean. But still,            
while bareback on horses,      
     
one could taste the stench of      
carnage, months following      
its aftermath. And yet,      
     
it all took me back to the      
scent of the sea, along with      
the lone cry of seagulls, and      
     
the reek of oil derricks
on the way from San Pedro,      
     
and my fondness for the
cuisine of the pampas.      
     
The lineage of an adopted
land’s culture that runs
through me, breath & soul      
     
long after there’s nothing left
of it. Except people like me,
who remember the blood      
     
from their ancestry, that
never wilts, it never flinches,
it won’t let it be forgotten.      
     
If you forget, it will simply
haunt you, but I don’t forget.
I remember it all, because      
     
it’s so much a part of the
generations that brought me
to this place of my birth,      
     
from the Missions & Pueblos
While the sagebrush explodes
from the conflagration      
     
that spills from the mouth
of the Malibu hills
and down to the coastline.      
     
Dark ash swirls in an updraft
before descending on the few
natives who straddle the surf
as they cast their nets in vain.      
     
And piers smolder, then burn;
the bones slowly collapsing
into the whitecap breakers.
 
Everything tinged orange from
the sun’s agony in the smoke.