Firefighting
Firefighting
Lighter than last year,
This house full
Of termites, quick
With rats. But
Geraniums flare
Either side of the steps,
Leonine guards
One must pass
In order to enter.
Until recently
A family pinned
This house down
To tabletop earth,
Paper-weighted
The vertical pages
Of its walls
On which poems
In the form of
Family photos hung.
And though
The overbite eaves
Guffaw at the idea
That anything is
Amiss here,
The county has declared
Something is.
Cheap silverware
Still steeps
In the deep sink
And in the sills
Boxelder bugs trudge
Through drifts
Of dead boxelder bugs
The morning the fire
Department pulls in.
They start it
In an upstairs bedroom.
One of them, kneeling,
Becomes a boy
Who brings a candle
Under the blanket
To beat the dark back,
Then falls asleep,
Letting the candle fall.
They stand in the yard,
Watching the house
Scrawl the first line
Of smoke on the sky’s
Blue stationary.
The mustachioed chief
Holds them back
To give the fire
A head start.
Not until the flames
Curl like eyelashes
Out of the windows
Does he give them
The signal to go in.
Now the house,
Having tasted oblivion,
Wants to be consumed,
And what had been
Condemned
They struggle to save,
Arcing water
Like boys pissing
Off a bridge
With sidelong glances
At one another,
Then lean ladders
Between windows
And climb in.
They fight for hours
To keep the house
From burning
Only to burn it
The rest of the way down.
You’ll be glad to know
They saved the boy.
He’s that man there
Holding a can of beer
In his blackened hand.