Tag Archives: fire

Fire!!! (With update 2 hours later) (And another update the next day.)

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My neighbors across the street in Mexico just called to tell me the transformer on the pole above my studio is on fire.  I’ve been talking to her and to Yolanda’s family for the past half hour and it is still burning. They are waiting for the Electric Company to turn off the power because evidently they can’t put out an electrical fire with water. I am still in the U.S. Going home tomorrow. This is been quite a day. I spent the first half of it in the hospital having a bone marrow biopsy. Not as bad as I feared, but still…..

Just got a message from my neighbor in Mexico that Antonio from the Raquet Club and another man  climbed up on my studio roof and  put out the fire with an extinguisher. I can sleep in peace. Such a relief.

Aug 1––2:53 PM I’m home and all is well. Have electricity!!! Yay.

Night Terror

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Night Terror

The circuits were all overcharged the night that one livewire
crossed another, triggering an electrical fire.
It was approximately midnight when I brutally awoke,
avulsed from bed and blanket by the acrid plumes of smoke.
Reeling from my dreamworld, plunged into reality,
Suffering from vertigo, I attempted to flee.
Gathered in my father’s arms, comforted by his grasping,
I was rushed into the cool night air, coughing, choking, gasping.
Our neighbors gathered all around to comfort and to gape—
 to give thanks with our family for our safe escape.
Fire whistles shrilling their approaching welcome scream,
I was jerked awake once more from that childhood dream.
And even though I knew those terrors were all in my head,
I padded down the hallway into my parents’ bed. 

 

Prompts today are livewire, approximately, brutal, avulse, overcharge and vertigo.

By All Means

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By All Means

Grandmother Air, Grandfather Tree,
forgive our eccentricity
in doing what we’ve done to thee.

The parricide that we have done
is more than just a smoking gun.
If it’s a war, chaos has won.

By burning, we’ve killed both of you.
Nature’s response should be our clue
that our end, too, is well in view.

No prankster when you make your threat,
you state explicitly, and yet,
still your message we fail to get.

An accurate interpretation
is that man’s manipulation
has resulted in great agitation.

Everything’s off-balanced and
gotten rather out of hand.
So nature has to make a stand.

Her arsenal is most minute.
and though mankind is most astute,
ironically, hard to refute.

Fools will say that we have won,
but still, when all is said and done,
we still hold the smoking gun.

If we don’t change our reckless course,
and solve our problem at its source,
she will respond with greater force.

Be it virus, fire or wind,
if our ways we do not mend,
we’ll be the means to our own end.

Prompt words today are eccentric, air, accurate, prankster and grandfather.

Amazing Photos of the CA Fires

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These San Francisco Chronicle shots are some of the most amazing photos and videos that I’ve ever seen. They really bring us eye-to-eye with the tragedies of the California catastrophic fires.

https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/visuals/kincade-fire/?fbclid=IwAR1DMKusbDPV1hj8Dk3fEp6fNmDCALNSeDk3Cz6EjOUiHw2yYIsuReAoEk0

 

Hot and Cold

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Hot as fire, cold as ice.
When the sun is hot, cold drinks are nice.

Cee’s Black and White Challenge: Hot and Cold

Licks

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Observing the burning off the hugely overgrown lot next door was a bit like viewing burning tea leaves. I saw a woman in a turban riding a giant frog among a hundred other images over the three nights it took to complete the burn. What do you see? Yes, it did get scary.  And very very smoky.  I especially like the shot of the LED lights on the plants next to my pool with the glow from the burn behind them.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/burn/

OMG!!! The entire mountain in front of my house is on fire!!!

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The headline above and the first of these photos were from an hour  and a half ago.  I’m not in danger and looks like probably no houses are endangered.  Hard to tell but the fact that there have been no sirens makes me think this isn’t in a residential neighborhood, although in the pictures it looks like it is.  The fire seems to have died out lower down, probably because the wind has died down.  I still see a small fire higher up on the mountain.  So strange…I feel like I’m the only person in the world who even noticed! And it was huge right after the sunset–lit up half of the sky!!!

Click on photos to enlarge.

This picture is taken from my upstairs terrace. The dome you see covers the ceiling of my bedroom.

The fire down below seems to have burned out, but it is now moving farther up the mountain, along the ridge and on the other side.  The cross  half way up the mountain was on fire earlier and the flags and electrical wire that ran up to it.  It is usually lit by light bulbs.  This was a lighting of a different sort.  It really looked like the entire town was on fire, but a friend in town didn’t even know about it and said to her it looked like the fire was in the Raquet Club, where I live.  But, not one fire siren or other siren was heard.  So strange.

This usually noisy place… deadly silent.  Not even one dog barking.  Eeerie.

Just realizing that I’ve written a story about the firest every year.  Here is last year’s: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/09/30/fire-on-the-mountain/

And the year before:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2013/04/19/dsc07925-jpg/

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 The Avid Student meets Murphy’s Law

Have you ever known someone who just could not get it right, no matter how they tried?  Here is a reprint of a poem I wrote a few years ago about a young lady who was the epitome of Murphy’s Law!

The Avid Student

Mrs. O’Leary, teach me how
please oh please, to milk a cow.
I won’t leave here till you do.
I’m bored today, and feeling blue.
Yesterday I baked a cake
with that new baker, name of Jake.
It didn’t rise.  It tasted awful.
Couldn’t eat but one small jaw full.
Day before I went to see
Joe the tailor.  Him and me
made a dress of chambray lace
but when I held it near my face
I found it itched me terrible.
To wear it was unbearable.
So I went on to see the preacher.
Wanted him to be my teacher.
But when it came the time to pray,
he found he hadn’t much to say.
I fear that I destroyed his faith.
I left him white as any wraith,
but found the cobbler in a pew
and asked him how to make a shoe.
He’d witnessed what the preacher did
and so he ran away and hid.
So Mrs. O’Leary, it’s up to you
to show me something I can do.
I know it’s dark, but I need right now
to know just how you milk your cow.
I brought a lantern.  I’ll hold it high.
It’s not real light, but we’ll get by.
I’ll just sit on this straw bale.
You fetch the cow and fetch the pail.
I love the way the hot milk steam
swirls around the rising cream.
I love the rhythm and the pomp
of my light squeeze and Bessie’s stomp
whenever I let loose her tit.
I cannot get enough of it!
But now we’re done and I can see
that bucket’s much too much for thee
to lift,  I’ll put the lantern down and
come with thee to give a hand.
I’ll come right back and close the barn.
Tomorrow, I’ll have quite a yarn
for everyone I want to tell
I finally did something well!!!!

For those of you unacquainted with Mrs. O’Leary, I include this description of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871:

“The summer of 1871 was very dry, leaving the ground parched and the wooden city vulnerable. On Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, just after nine o’clock, a fire broke out in the barn behind the home of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary at 13 DeKoven Street. How the fire started is still unknown today, but an O’Leary cow often gets the credit.

The firefighters, exhausted from fighting a large fire the day before, were first sent to the wrong neighborhood. When they finally arrived at the O’Leary’s, they found the fire raging out of control. The blaze quickly spread east and north. Wooden houses, commercial and industrial buildings, and private mansions were all consumed in the blaze.

After two days, rain began to fall. On the morning of October 10, 1871, the fire died out, leaving complete devastation in the heart of the city. At least 300 people were dead, 100,000 people were homeless, and $200 million worth of property was destroyed. The entire central business district of Chicago was leveled. The fire was one of the most spectacular events of the nineteenth century, and it is recognized as a major milestone in the city’s history.”

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Comedy of Errors (and bonus assignment!).”Murphy’s Law says, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Write about a time everything did — fiction encouraged here, too!

Fire on the Mountain

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Fire on the Mountain

The smell of burning leaves us only when we sleep,
the hills above us aflame for weeks as the wind
catches the upraised hands of a dozen fires
and hurries them here and there.

It is like this every year
at the end of summer,
with the dry grass ignited by
light reflected by a piece of glass
or careless farmers burning off their fields.

The lushness of the rainy season
long since turned to fodder by the sun,
the fires burn for weeks along the ridges
and the hollows of the Sierra Madre—
raising her skirts from where we humans
puddle at her ankles.

Imprisoned in their separate worlds,
the village dogs bark
as though if freed
they’d catch the flames
or give chase at least.

The distracting smell of roasting meat
hints at some neighborhood barbecue,
but only afterwards do we find
the cow caught by her horns in the fence
and roasted live.

Still, that smell of roasting meat
pushes fingers through the smoke of coyote brush
and piñon pines and sage,
driving the dogs to frenzy.

The new young gardener’s
ancient heap of rusting Honda
chugs up the hill like the rhythm section
of this neighborhood banda group
with its smoke machine gone crazy
and its light show far above.

The eerie woodwinds
of canine voices far below
circle like children
waiting for their birthday cake,
ringing ‘round the rosy,
ringing ‘round the rosy
as ashes, ashes,
it all falls down.

I discovered a new prompting site. The prompt for this poem was to write down the following, then to use all six in a poem that begins with “The smell of burning leaves….” (I had a different take on that first line.)

Something you buy in a bakery. (Birthday cake)
A smell in a diner. (Roast beef)
A make of automobile. (Honda)
Something people do to relieve stress. (Sleep)
An unusual musical instrument. (Quena flute. I felt the actual name of the instrument distracted from the poem, so I used the more generic “woodwind.”)
A child’s game. (Ring around the Rosy)

Here is the link for that site if you want to follow the prompt or see other poems written to this prompt.

Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar (Day 18 of NaPoWriMo)

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The Prompt today was to write a poem that begins and ends with the same word.

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“Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar”

Smoldering.

Señor Garcia is smoking today.
Below him,
Maria Phoenix lies on satin sheets
on the wall of Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar.

DSC07822

It is a small palapa restaurant––soft orange front with
hot pink trim–– that I’ve driven by hundreds of times before;
and every time, I’ve wanted to come in, but haven’t.
Now today, suddenly,
I don’t want to go home
and so my car turns in across the carretera.

DSC07818

I am the lone customer.
The cook and waiter
spring to action.
Totopos for him to bring,
a fire for her to light.
This is a fish restaurant
and I am a non-fish
eater, choosing between
quesadillas and beans
or a hamburger and fries.
Needless to say, I’m not here for the food.

I am here for the view and the limits
imposed by eating alone in an otherwise empty
restaurant/bar. I have a poem to write
and need the discipline imposed by a place
where there’s nothing else to do.
My only distraction is the view,
which forms the subject of my poem
and so is anything but a distraction.

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The smoke from a dozen fires
rises into the air from the entire eastern slope
of Mount Garcia across the lake.
Whether by accident or by the hand of farmers
lighting fires to clear last year’s stubble from the fields,
the effect is that this extinct volcano
has somehow come to life,
springing leaks.

Fanned by a recent wind, the smoke grows denser, rises higher.
Below the slopes, a patchwork quilt of strawberry and raspberry
fields, covered with plastic sheets,
spawn fruit for the tables of El Norte.

Maria, that other smoldering beauty, lies suspended all around me––
long canvas banners reflecting her screen loves and her roles.
She looks over one shoulder, wears a rebozo or a mariachi’s sombrero.
Cantinflas, that beloved clown, shares her wall but is never in a shot with her.
They are opposites: the sexual symbol and the comic. One raises tension
and the other seeks to dispel it.

Maria Phoenix

I am in between, a mere observer, I know.
In every case it’s likely that the fire has been lit by means unnatural,
but nonetheless, it ignites my imagination.
I am surrounded by it.
“Blue Bayou” plays on the sound system.
Sleepy eyes.
My eyes sting from the smoke
that has filtered toward me
from eight miles or so across the lake.
The tears in my eyes are from the smoke,
not from memories of the departed one
I used to come with to these fish restaurants.

They are not the place for gringos.
Word is out about the sanitation
or where the fish comes from
or who might be encountered here.
A few restaurants down, there was a cartel killing
just about a year ago––perhaps more, perhaps less.
At any rate, Americanos and Canadians are rarely found here.

Today, no one else is found here.
“There’s no exception to the rule”
plays on the sound system.
“Everybody plays the fool.”
Feeling a stranger in the place where I live
is a feeling pleasurable to me––
an emotion I do not feel foolish for pursuing.

The waiter, as though I’m a repeat customer,
brings an entire bucket of ice
and fills my glass each time he passes.
They have my brand of rum.

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I have always known this place could be my place.
The pleasure of knowing it to be so warms me
as much as the second jigger of rum.
Shall he pour it for me? Do I want it all?
Just half, I tell him, and fill the glass with Coke.
I like it weaker, so I can spread it out.
Like the fire.

Smoldering.