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