Little words under an orange sky

San Francisco Bay and Bay Bridge in smoke from wildfires September 2020

You make me speak in the tongue of a little girl

She does not know embarrassed or ashamed

Only the sound and smell of waves, nighttime swims and backyard pansies.

Her words come back under the new sky

No one is really safe here now in the orange haze so no one is left alone

I can remember the ice cream churn humming

Beside the whelping box that daddy built in an afternoon.

Joy before afraid and lonely became her best friends

The orange sky tells me again of when everything changed

Happy play can go on only if you don't think it is silly

To climb the tallest tree in the yard and just sit there snug in the branches

Belonging to the top of the world.

There are scarier things than the orange sky

I know because I met them

That day I wanted just to run with my classmate

In my place of make-believe games and bare feet.

View of downtown San Francisco through fire haze September 2020