.
I’ve adopted Molly’s strategy of using Wordle guesses as writing prompts. Thursday’s final word sparked deeper thinking about fire. The images from Los Angeles are haunting as are the stories of the loss of Black middle class neighborhoods that embodied the American dream of generational wealth. I grieve all the non-human lives that have been extinguished and uncounted and which float now in the air as smoke and ash.
Fire destroys, yet fire is also how we describe love and passion, the urge to create, and the desire to do better. We sing around campfires and we light candles in our religions. Giant sequoias and lodgepole pines need fire in order to release their seeds and regenerate.
Fire is complicated.
Process notes:
I’ve been writing mostly haiku for the first month and a half of #poemsforpersistence, but I’m feeling the urge to return to cheritas.
Today’s poem is comprised of three linked cheritas in which I answered my question of despair, “How is this all going to turn out?!?!” with what can seem grim in stanza/poem one; with the conundrum of the two faces of fire in stanza/poem two (and I’m pretty sure you’re savvy enough to realize I’m not just writing about literal fire); with, in stanza/poem three, the necessity for some kind of answer that can be ongoing and joyous (since…see stanza/poem one).
The image is another from The Public Domain Image Archive.
Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
A(nother) Year of Reading 
Perfect!!
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I think you have captured the complexity of fire and your poem is brilliant. I reviewed the cherita as a form and three together work nicely. After reading the whole thing, the first three lines felt particularly impactful.
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Dangerous, equally.
Face the inferno, or turn away.
The illustration is simply the cherry on top. Thank you for sharing this – it’s powerful and thought-provoking to really grapple with complex concepts and give them the weight they deserve. A life-giving, but destructive force is indeed one of those things — which really makes doubly bitter the simplistic hot-take lies being told about it…
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First of all, perfect image to go with your poem. In some tiny way, I’d like to think of Poetry Friday as dancing together. Nice work, Mary Lee. This is a powerful poem.
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I’ve never been tempted to Wordle, but I do like the idea of using your word attempts to further infrom your writing. Your poem offers itself to multiple interpretations with fire itself so finely poised between creation and destruction. I enjoyed what your words did in my head, Mary Lee.
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I like the way you linked the cheritas and how they captured the flow of your thinking. Nicely done! Thank you.
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Mary Lee, I appreciate your thoughts about all the loss. It is overwhelming, isn’t it? And I hadn’t even spent time thinking about the loss of animals and plants, now up in smoke and ash. Thank you for writing this, and for sharing your process.
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After reading & watching so many interviews, about the fire & more, I am struck by your line early in the poem, “We can Once Upon all we want”, then think of “If wishes were horses”. We need to be together, and I admire your poem’s travel to now, Mary Lee! Thank you!
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“Nothing for it/ except to dance/ together” expresses that give and take, the need for fire and the danger of it. I have been feeling the grief over these fires more than most. I’ve had to protect my mental health and not watch the news (or listen to NPR).
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That first line!!!! Also, what a perfect image to accompany your poem.
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This is a keeper, Mary Lee! I’m saving it. And yes, perfect illo (“Combustion and Illumination”). Like last week’s Poetry Friday, I am reminded that I had wanted to do an anthology about how good and bad travel together and we can’t wait for the bad to leave to feel the good. When do we dance? Always.
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Mary Lee, I love the cherita format and yours is intricate and deep with a fabulous ending. I think the SoCal campaign is a good example of dancing together. There is sorrow in life but we must persist with others.
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I do adore running with a form…it just helps me be creative in new ways. Fire is so dangerous. It’s hard for me to process the size and scope of the LA fires. I heard a commentator this morning that said no amount of water could have kept this fire from happening with those crazy winds. I hate the idea of facing the inferno…but it is necessary. I cannot imagine how this is all going to get rebuilt for the Olympics, Super Bowl and World Cup.
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“face the inferno” and dance, Yes—it’s what we must do! Powerful poem and intriguing art. I like your carry overs from one stanza to the next—We are in the belly of the 🔥… Thanks!
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Mary Lee, this is outstanding — the poem, the subtext, the sheer power of the observation and the call to the only action we can pursue.
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Mary Lee, wow, this is profound, powerful. So many double meanings in your words, especially in your last stanza “nothing for it / but to dance / together.” Thank you for sharing your inspiration.
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