from Earthway

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