Judith Cody Life is Good Except for the Eternal Flames
Last count: one thousand eight hundred wildfires surround us as we sleep, eat, inhale them along with the orange-tinted TV news reports (they are now an addiction). Strangling-gray shrouds stainless steel B-rex barbecues, ash-bathed investment automobiles. Strangling-gray mushes tightly against the many window-paneled monster mansions, the calm little row houses, the soft struggle of suburbia. Strangling-gray dips beneath freeway overpasses, seeking the homeless sheltered there. Strangling-gray oozes into nostrils, creeps beneath Ray-Bans, scratching laser-sculpted corneas. Occasionally, as if signaling a turn of events, rose gardens flicker preposterous hues (just for several seconds) that puncture the dense pall before they are instantaneously incinerated, joining the other ash-coated hillsides. On Fourth of July week, the strangling-gray drifted away on a mellow wind off of the Pacific Ocean. No one prayed to the ocean for this wonder-wind that cleansed the sky to Paul Newman blue and allowed tamed-by-man fireworks to come