ANNICE JACOBY
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FIRE ON THE OAKLAND HILLS​

No brutalities on this copper sky day
I am exchanging romantic remarks
on a terrace over a lazy lunch on a nappy Sunday

The linen is suddenly browned 
with the sifting of a black ceiling cloud
Curled cinders of a morning note
float across ten miles of salt bay into my backyard
Directions to buy dish soap and vodka
are still legible through the musky char

This is more than an opera of hurricane weather
Treats eaten in a hurry
Another argument with life
The joy of a rainstorm
dissolves to disaster
Tinder in a crepe box
diminishes the world

Neighbors climb the roof
with uncertain ladders
Like the earthquake
two years and three days before,
the streets have a holiday freedom
Nothing is more important
than the observation of this day

Do not ignore
Do not go on with immediate tasks
Connect with someone
Take action
There are etiquettes 
But no guarantees
Hosing your roof
is an emotional gesture
to seem alert
But it drains the water
needed for fighting the flagrant dragon on the hill
that's already eating the hearts of your neighbors
No matter how bolstered
upholstered, credited
organized and worthy
they watch
helpless
or flee as refugees from another time
​
Quickly empty the house
of only the most precious
Everyone has an album
an account
a special piece of equipment
a comforter
a convenience
a tenderness
a lifetime of work 
Chose ghosts of effort and experience
that harbor in a house
in careful fear
This is an evacuation of your assumptions
of invincible suburban safety

A woman holds her home 
on the roof like a fort
itemizing the contents below
to passing strangers in the street
A stamp collection worth a hundred grand
inherited from her uncle
who owned a shop
47 years on Franklin and Fourteenth
Her miniature paintings
a tapestry collection
in boxes she couldn't deal with
before moving her ninety year old mother
who lived on the couch
in the front room
where everyday
in the 3 o'clock light
she watched on the veneer of the pioneer chest
Christ lift up his arms
and vividly visit her world

My company is a vigilant activist
seeker and keeper 
of moments of madness and ecstasy
There is no folly
in the fearing
when the film clicks
hoping to retain the color of pain
The lighting cues are theatrical
striking all of us
with religious guilt
because the fire is inexorably beautiful


The sky charges an emotional weather shared for miles
smelling like a good mesquite restaurant
like Bali in constant tropical smolder
coconut husks and flesh
in a quiet the quality of a spring snowfall

We can take this strange melancholy
and peel the velvet linings of intimacy and rage
as the last refuge of life

A day that demands
instant inventory of your most precious
irreplaceable
marks a time
when you begin again
the spare soul blaze
survival and motivation
all called in for review.

​
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