[2025:45] Residents Urged to Stay Inside, Libby Maxey

Good weather, then the summer’s quick stiletto
in the gut: wildfire. Lightning without rain,
they say, our spring a superficial stain
on dry land. Now the ceiling fan turns slow
suspended cartwheels, endless, rolling nowhere,
we mirroring its prone sprawl below,
the hostages of what we cannot know
and what we can: the acres burned, the air
itself a danger. Now our appetites
are too irrelevant to diagnose;
we are our waiting, windows fully closed,
the afternoon an early-graying night.
The only hunger fear has yet to tame
is that of moving vast-consuming flame.