April 2021
Author's Note: I posted a photo on Facebook along with a remark that Jim Lewis suggested
might be a prompt for a poem. The prompt appears in the line ending in filter. “A Burning Somewhere”
will be in Threnody, forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in late 2021.
A Burning Somewhere
I snap a dazzling sunset photo of the golden orb plummeting to the sea. At first, I think my dirty window is the only filter: panes glazed by offshore winds and coastal fog. Then, I realize it’s flames in inland foothills, canyons, desert flatlands that have rendered blue skies umber. Slater, Lone Star, Creek, Bobcat, El Dorado, to name a blazing few. Death is the mother of beauty, the poet claims. Does this hold true? Always, a burning, always a fire. Somewhere a hearth, somewhere a pyre. The italicized line is from “Sunday Morning,” by Wallace Stevens
Originally published in Red Shift 5
©2021 Donna Hilbert
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