Water and Fire
Struggling with the Sanskrit
of a poem
1400 years old,
keyaṃ tvarā means what?
Something like, why the big hurry.
So I go get coffee at the Blue Owl.
Banana bread’s fresh this morning,
guy with a rough-trimmed beard tells me.
It’s his mother’s recipe.
A firefighter too—last month
got called with his truck out to Paradise.
The worst he’s ever seen.
That’s California but it sure could happen here.
We in this world living are water
the old poet says controlling her grief,
we trickle from the mouth
of a clay pot.
Fire, though, and I put a few dollars
in the tip jar,
that’s something else.
