The Santa Ynez are on Fire again

    The Santa Ynez are on fire, for the second time in a year. 

    Was it a glass shard on a hot day? A bad piece of wiring? A stray cigarette? Who knows, it’s all the same in the end.

    ‘Who’d want to live up there anymore?’ asked a neighbor, his face aglow in a nasty orange.

    Sirens wail below. Helicopters chop through the sooty, smoky air. 

    ‘There are no more houses left up there,’ another neighbor said to the other. ‘What’s there to save?’

    I went for a walk, mask on, through the ash raining down on my head, hearing the multitude of fire machines clambering or flying up the Santa Ynez on fire.

    I know a girl who lives in the thick of the conflagration up there. 

    The day is dark like the night. But the towering flames light up the dark like the day. 

    And I know more days are going to be like this.

The Commodore

    He was menacingly tall, with a jaunty captain’s cap on his head. And his ice-cold blue eyes chilled you to the soul. But he easily made friends in the bar at the end of the world.

    When he laughed - especially after copious dirty jokes - he had the thunder of Pan. 

    He bellowed cigarette smoke outside on the patio, and made a god-almighty sound during a football game. He asked for money often, which went to cigarettes and beer and jager shots. He was desperately poor, though told of past riches. 

    His name was forgotten a long time ago, so he had one given to him: the Commodore. He was a shocking man when he wanted to be, and was more shocking when he didn’t mean to be. 

    And when he died in that Airstream trailer he rented on a plot of land off of Camino del Sur, he was given a dignified send off by his few friends and me.