Burning

I couldn’t remember what propelled me
out my front door and into the purplish
blue of a 6am suburban street.

Maybe, so I could see, for the first time
sunrise blaring over a cityscape
choked with ash from a marshfire in NOLA.

There were hot living room windows glaring
at me from the other side of the road
while the sun strained northwards above the trees.

It burned the windows gold-vermillion.
An ordinary weekday morning, the kind
I had witnessed every work day before

The flames consumed unnaturally
the swamps, leaving blankets of grey dust
impenetrable by rays still climbing

Through the ghetto past the refinery, pouring
smoke into the sky, the windshields of cars
burst into flame on the drive to work.

There were storefronts going blind and children,
uniformed, boarding buses once yellow
lumbering toward the singed brick school house.