Smoke on the water
Deep Purple
Fire in the sky
Smoke on the water
.
I am inundated with smoke; it hangs heavy over the tops of trees and thickens the already-dense autumn fog into rolling waves of obscured air. Visibility is near nil. Headlights don’t so much slice through the morass as momentarily serrate the chunks of darkness into crumble-dust.
In already-surrealistic surroundings peopled with Orwellian masked men in an atmosphere of futuristic levels of automaton non-understanding, this blaze-induced further obscuration of clarity that chokes one’s very ability to breathe is portentious.
I claw for breath. For autonomy.
Impatient for movement. For escape.
My head throbs.
My eyes burn.
The stench of burnt ash clings to my skin.
My clothes are soaked in the stink of smoke.
I can no longer see the water from my window.
My neighboring island is nearly invisible, coated in an unclear haze of gray.
My coast is on fire.
What warms also destroys.
I know, eventually, the flames will die.
But I’m also well aware that these wildfires are not the only flames being ignited in the world right now.
And it’s the lingering smoke that kills.
.
Post title and quoted lyrics borrowed from the Deep Purple song.
Nicely put. It is something else, and coupled with fog was, well I don’t know what.
Surreal?
We’ve had smoke every summer for the past six years. Sometimes it comes in July, more typically it clouds what little sun we get in August. But this year, with it being so wet in June/July, I was hoping we’d get a break. Alas, come September: no such luck.
Our skies are less gray today, comparatively. But still no sign of blue.
Down here (SF Bay Area) there have been smoky skies for weeks from numerous remote wildfires from a monster lightning storm several weeks ago, plus drifting smoke from Wash.& Oregon fires! One day the smoke was so bad it blocked the sun at dawn, it stayed dark in the house until noon ! That was majorly spooky & scary. Other days the sun was actually red at dawn..
Yes, I’ve seen that red-dawn sun. It’s ominous.
thinking of you – brilliant prose
May x
May More recently posted…Intimacies, trials and tribulations of non-monogamy
Such a strong, deep post. Feve. Keep safe!
~ Marie
I hope you stay safe. These fires are still raging and show little signs of being controlled in the near future.
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