Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
hazy valley:
stubble fire smoke glows like
a Martian landscape.
after the harvest,
farmland - dry & ignitable:
distant smoke.
after harvest,
farmers burn off stalks:
distant painted hills.
A smoky morning signals chilly air as those who live with walls of plastic sheet gather anything matches set aflare, and huddle where skin reddens from the heat. The toxic kindling of modernity can burn so quickly, swirling into ash. The search for fine fuel builds fraternity as all sift through the varied kinds of trash. They seek a slow and steady type of fire, but poison and explosive burn aren't linked. This toxic gas hangs low, where they inspire, a deadly vapor which makes this clan extinct. Smoldering pit, skirted by serene stiffs -- of what killed them, there remains no whiff.
The spastic flame that dances fast: too weird to match to drum. The teary eye strays into trance as if deadened by rum. Where will the flame transport us now that smoke has made us cry? Where will the cracking sounds take us as we turn to the sky? The moon is out and casts a glow, a glow of milky white. And each dim point of starlight burns trillions of times as bright as that feeble, little campfire that rules what I now feel: the heat, the smoke, the popping sounds that now make my head reel.
turrets turned as tires burned
forming a cloak of jet black smoke
oh hell! oh hell! for a tank shell
will pass right through, belching smoke of its own like a chimney flue
and when the wall is blown apart, and spall flies as from a cart of darts
I’ll long for naught, just I thought, while I wonder just what man hath wrought
Tiger Riding for Beginners 