Smoke

I had the idea that I’d do a lot of gardening this week. I had good stuff planned: weeding, pruning back the takeover rosebush from the path, fixing up the orchard drip irrigation lines, fertilizer on the citrus trees.

But.

This.

There’s smoke on the horizon and if I go outside, I cough. The air smells like a campfire gone wrong. One person I know has evacuated, and another got a warning that didn’t follow through; some others from my poetry group, who I am less in touch with outside our monthly get together, I worry about. I worry about family, too, and the power getting cut, and all the old growth redwoods in Big Basin, and the beautiful buildings that got built the last time things were really bad, back when there was the WPA. I worry about my favorite parks, about the trees and bobcats. I hope, nervously, that the mountain lions are okay.

I worry.

I hope everyone – and although I know it’s impossible, at least as much all the trees – is okay.