Morning Open Thread: Inferno

This author, who is on Pacific Coast Time, may sometimes show up later than when the post is published. That is a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.

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So grab your cuppa, and join in

Fire on the Hills

by Robinson Jeffers

The deer were bounding like blown leaves

Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;

I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.

Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror

Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned

Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle

Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,

Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders

He had come from far off for the good hunting

With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless

Blue, and the hills merciless black,

The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.

I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,

The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.

^{"Fire on the Hills" from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, edited by Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 2001}

For the past several days, the highs here have been well into the 100s, and the lows in the high 70s.  Our usual afternoon sea breeze has been transformed  into a desert dragon’s blast of fire. 

Even the New York Times has taken notice:

 Record Heat in Southern California,
and an Ominous Start to Wildfire Season

There are already over a dozen fires, all the way from California’s southern border with Mexico to our northern border with Oregon.  One person has died, and dozens of homes have been destroyed. 

Heat

by H.D (1886-1961)

O wind, rend open the heat,

cut apart the heat,

rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop

through this thick air –

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts

the points of pears

and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat –

plough through it,

turning it on either side

of your path.

^{“Heat”© 1982 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle}

G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies