The Vee of Geese
In August heat, our lawn is dry like husks of corn.
The only catheter from clouds—a kinking,
winding garden hose that wraps its rope around
a chair and will not reach my sacred green geranium
still dappling its scarlet buds.
Fires climb the mountainsides
with nimble fingers of their flames.
It’s strange to see the gusting plumes,
the rising gray, just hanging there
like roofs on homes.
Just miles away from where we live,
evacuations take their toll—lines of heaving
pick-up trucks come crawling by.
Have you seen The Grapes of Wrath or read the book?
On our street, a little girl has lost her doll;
it fell in ditches somewhere close and so we search
like FBI hunting for a kidnapped child.
We set up just one simple stand for lemonade—
free to pairs of thirsty lips—reminisce about
our ancient childhoods when skies were different shades
of blue that rarely made us stop and think.
Before it’s 3:00, we comb the nearest grocery stores—
not a single lemon left, 30 lbs. of sugar gone.
We’re down to drinking from the hose.
Out of nowhere comes a single vee of geese,
just below the bombers plowing through the smoke,
the stinging ash—a tarnished girth
of tragedy I’ve never seen in valleys here.
The little girl is by my side; she walks, I limp—
she asks me why. I make it sound like toes we stub.
I find her doll in piles of rocks,
dusting off the chestnut braids, straightening
pink checkered sleeves, put it in her tired arms.
She grabs my artificial thigh, asks me if it is a tree.
Says out loud to everyone still standing there:
“Planes and birds have come to rescue all of us.”
Then a pause. “I love you”—without reasoning.