I.i.

If you want to change your life
_          burn down your house
_     _ Before we left for the beach

Ronna took off her rings
_           _placing them on the basin
_     _ with the rest of her possessions

the hot offshore winds
_           _meant it was warm and cool
_     _ as we waded on the wet sand

through the agitated air
_           _a day that was just right
_     _ Ronna rehearsing her solemn

procession up the aisle
_           _one arm crooked up
_     _ on her imaginary father’s

the other with an imaginary bouquet
_           _surrounded by frisbees
_     _ a day happy enough

to forgive one’s own karma
_           _forget that of others
_     _ under a blue sky

which as we returned
_           _over the Devil’s Slide
_     _ was divided like a flag

half blue half ominous black
_           _the dense smoke a message
_     _ to speed home

over the Bay Bridge
_           _to the miles-wide storm cloud
_     _ fringed with dots of flame

increasing in darkness
_           _until it was almost night
_     _ headlights the flashing emergency

warning our freeway was CLOSED
_           _towards the house where
_     _ (we did not yet know this)

Cherry our unsuspecting
_           _house-mate from Taiwan
_     _ had just narrowly escaped

through a burning rain
_           _of eucalyptus leaves
_     _ with no more than her stuffed bear

and a few yards up the street
_           _eight people burned to death
_     _ rivulets of metal

from their melted cars
_           _over the burned asphalt
      We were the last to make it through

we heard from one survivor
_           _who had jumped in the back
_     _ of a stranger’s pick-up

in the hushed exchanges
_           _as we waited for coffee
_     _ next morning at the bed-and-breakfast

with nothing to do that day
_           but to tell our tales
_      (the woman two doors down

had loaded her car to the roof
          and now it was too late
     to go back inside

and find her car keys)
_           _that were only fragments
_     _ The fourth afternoon

we were taken there
_           _in an Oakland police car
_     _ a wreath where our neighbor died

and the thick layer of ash
_           (Could this be all our books?
     the stove? the refrigerator?_

the two sets of china?)
_           _as unpossessed
_     _ as the Huron potsherds

in the black corner of an autumn field
_           _the burnt tiles of that Roman villa —
_     _ impossible to explain this

hard just to keep in mind
_           _that we all must die
_     _ In a bravura gesture

of letting-go
_           _Ronna took out her key
_     _ and threw it back to the Devas

we were driven away
_           _the three of us crying
_     _ like ancient warriors

or pre-adolescents
_           _dry sobs that since
_     _ have come back in therapy

divorce my mother’s death
_           _choked us that week
_     _ at each glimpse of the naked hillside

as labile as children
_           who have not yet the illusion
_      we are in control

dazzled and shattered in turn
_           _by the ominous beauty
_     _ of say a sunset under rainclouds

from which it was a relief
_           to go back to teaching
_      Pound’s tears at Pisa

watching the spider at work
          the tent-peg’s moving shadow
     the moon through laundry

to the nine-through-fiveness
_           _of a twentieth century
_     _ the unassailable defenses

of a presentational self
_           _as if in one week
_     _ we had lived two different ages

two habits of living
_           _irreconcilable
_     _ except when caught off guard

my cheek unexpectedly wet
_           _from reading in the Chronicle
_     _ of Tibetan prayer wheels

on the hillside
planted where homes had been