Semi-Random Reflections

Read time: 2 mins.

I spent much of last week dealing with a brush fire a cousin started in our woods. The fire’s out now, the cousin has left, and we’re very lucky that only a comparatively small section of the woods burned. We’re also lucky that none of the surrounding homes (including our own) sustained any damage (though some neighbors did have sleepless nights). Great credit goes to our local Fire Department for their repeated visits.

I salvaged some scraps of paper from a sketchbook that got caught in the flames. Those scraps will become a landing place for stray reflections on the event. The samples below show some of the smaller scraps. I’ll include typed transcripts of each verse below its picture (since reading my handwriting sometimes poses a problem even for me).

Foot-deep moss and straw
provide the finest quilt
a smooring flame could seek.

Sap from ashen bark
drips where embers chewed the bark.
Are those tears or blood?

Spider webs still cling to vines.
The vines have blown away as smoke.
Daddy Long Legs checks the damage.

Chintzy outline sketch.
Flames consume the canvas.
Priceless portrait.

Grandad’s saplings;
my childhood shade,
shaded now with blackened base.
I hope the roots survive.