Smoke and ashes

Our city is thick with yellow smoke. The moon is blood. Ash floats visibly in the air and heaps up in corners. The Oregon and Washington forest fires continue to rage, covering now 31,000 acres/ 50 square miles of our lush and beautiful forests. Yosemite is burning (good thing WalkingMarj visited in May) and much of California. Montana and Glacier National Park is ablaze. 

Local crowd funding and many volunteers are attempting to put N95 respirator masks into the hands of thousands of unhoused people who have no choice but to breathe the ash and smoke night and day. (I also got mine today. It helps a little, but I'm coughing, breathing with difficulty, and having headaches and fatigue.) I think of all the people the USA has bombed, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places. I think of how much more horrible it must be to breathe the smoke and ashes of a city that once was home. What madness, what incredible suffering, human beings inflict on each other. Hurricane Irma, leaving a trail of suffering behind it, is headed for Mar-A-Lago. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks.

I am grateful to Ceridwen for her comment yesterday, which I'm posting here because she says it so well: "The situation is frankly apocalyptic in respect to both climatic and to political events. Your country is simultaneously burning in fever and  swamped in a mucksweat like an animal fighting to rid itself of an incubus that is riding it to perdition." Exactly so.