Praire Fire on the Llano
The summer of drought brought the summer of prairie fires. One
stretched to sixty-three miles of flaming yellow-red teeth consuming dry grass,
leaving scraggly black fingers of mesquite, advancing smoke billowing
from a distance like God stirring floor sweepings with a giant prairie broom
Jake clears a firebreak with the backhoe, its bucket like an awkward
golden pelican, while Sanders hoses down the feed barn nearest to the fire’s
The town’s only fire truck hoses down the inferno’s shoulder
like a child pissing on Hell.
Man gets awful cocky sometimes: stringing barbed wire, blading roads, overgrazing. Then the prairie bucks up and warns him not to get too
cozy.