The Burn

Posted on September 26, 2004 in Neighborhood

The ground looks like the part of my groin that they shaved for my angiogram. The terrain looks like an offended shoulder, stripped of its chaparral. The fire that blocked Santiago Canyon Road last night began near a copse of white-barked sycamores on the east side and marched up a hill. Not much charred. I had feared a storm on the scale of last autumn’s herbivorous fires, a mindless protozoan which gobbled up everything in its path. Before I saw it, I wondered what species to name it for. When I spotted the ashes after nearly driving by it, I dispensed of the need to metaphorize. It was a brush fire, contained before it could become a myth.