wildfires raze they say this season is the worst in our modern history. one month in, more than three million hectares of land have already gone up in flames. climate change and drought laid the groundwork. cellulose acetate, lightning, and sparks from passing trains did the rest. with their skyline a copper smear, new_york has sent firefighters to canada. northeast flights have been delayed. in some cities the air is dry, hot, and caked with smoke. here the gauze of our grasslands is no thicker than it was last week. if i've been breathing in a hazardous haze of sulphur, nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds, my lungs can't tell the difference between that strange_brew and whatever passed for oxygen before the world fell asleep with a lit cigarette in its mouth. 230608 ... ovenbird We’ve been too long without rain and now the forests burn. Each day arrives veiled in haze, trapping putrid air near the ground, so that when I walk the dog I come home coughing. The sunsets have the wide eyed beauty of a child hot with fever. The moon rises red behind the smoke, a wild eye rolling in the night sky, a carnelian amongst the stars. The sun shines orange, like the light of late afternoon in the deepest winter, but the breeze is hot and rank, a hyena breathing down your neck, hungry and impatient. These wildfire days are scented with the perfume of apocalypse and I shut my windows against the possibility of the end times. I run air purifiers in every room, let their white noise hum pacify me. I turn my proprioceptive gaze inward, breathe deep and test the vigour of my lungs: no hitch, no ache, no resistance…so it seems I’m not dead yet. On the news I watch flames jump the highway so that this critical artery becomes a tunnel of ash and embers. There’s no rain in the forecast so all I can hope for is a shift in the wind, some unexpected Pacific zephyr, sweet and light and tasting of the sea. But we’ve forgotten how to call the gales. We’ve forgotten the poems and songs, our voices hoarse from lack of use. When no one lights the flames that make a circle of light for our stories, the forest brings them to us, and makes a ceremony of our demise. 250906 what's it to you? who go blather from