Volunteering:

quoddy fog
rear view

Volunteering:  

 

What short wicks

we fuel with our blood.

                                Jim Harrison

                                Returning to Earth

I wonder from time to time if when the firemen

arrived that maybe they wavered at the front door

say the fire wasn’t

as fully engaged as they’d been led to be

alarmed by and maybe because they’re friends of the possible

deceased and maybe she’s dead

asleep in her now down

stairs bed (she’s been failing lately she’s been seen

taking orders

of oxygen) and maybe it’s those green

narrow cylinders they wait and weigh

their lives against

not craving opening the door

to that reluctant sucking sound like lifting a chest

freezer and all the fall meat eaten

and it’s an abandoned cavern: only a

small burn of ice a pebble of a bulb

of frozen snow to pinch between three

gloved fingers – it’s what they find, after hosing

the house empty of all human occupants: an empty freezer

blockaded by cat shit and cat bodies and a winter’s supply

of wood since it’s August and time to start

bringing it in and it’s neatly stacked

but they scattered it looking for fire isn’t that

what they’re supposed to do once they’re consumed

by nerve and blow open the door

break the glass right at the corner

of that sticker:

 CAUTION: OXYGEN

                                       IN  USE