smoke fire breath - rock paper scissors

i will read the ashes for you, if you ask me.
i will look on the fire and tell you from the gray lashes
and out of the red and black tongues and stripes,
i will tell how fire comes and how fire runs as far as the sea.
                                    - carl sandburg

i wonder - about hummingbird lungs..
smoke thickens in my own chest..
it's more than smoke..of course..
it's the heat of flame sadness
ember dust homes ..
treasures of life after life..
up...in...smoke...

the forests..
tree after tree..
masterpiece of masterpiece...
up up and away ~


The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders
He had come from far off for the good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue, and the hills merciless black,
The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy. 
                     - robinson jeffers

 

hummingbirds have a greater need
for oxygen than any other vertebrate ..
how's it going, i wonder?
every bird..the winged ones..

how is their sight .. their seeing orbs..?
no visine to clear out the dryness..
the tinder and soot of hillsides under their eyelids..
haze-hued..

nests
tumbling into blaze
eggs..would there be any eggs?
cracking as they crackle

you cannot put a fire out -
a thing that can ignite
can go, itself, without a fan -
upon the slowest night -
               - emily dickinson

providing oxygen is one of the noblest profession..
...so i've heard...
fire is greedy - for wood..for dry grass scraps ..
for breath that perpetuates brilliance..
how do we take its breath away?

impermanence does not happen at the end..
it is continuous ~

breathe..breathe it in...