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Explore poems read by the two authors in conversation with each other, then follow your own fish to unlock your own creativity, and share it with us.
Hello. This is Deborah here with my friend and neighbor Sue Boudreaux. We are your Follow A Fish poetry conversations and inspiration podcast hosts. We are loving the chance to share and discuss our poetry each week with more and more wonderful responses to our weekly prompts coming in from you, our listeners. We're also celebrating our live open mic series, which launched yesterday at the Good Earth Cafe here in El Cebrante and which we are hoping will become a monthly event.
Deborah:Our next one is scheduled for Sunday, March 15 at 03:30. For more info, check out our website at curiositycatpodcasts.com. This weekend's episodes are focused on wildfire. Yesterday, we read Sue's poem Chimneys responding to the Paradise Conflagration. Today, we have two fairly brief fire poems of mine.
Deborah:The first is Dry Lightning. Dry Lightning. Oh, California, where are you burning? From the cabin porch, I search the horizon through haze and trees. The deck rails I stained only yesterday with our cutout pattern of swallows in flight glow orange in this strange amber light.
Deborah:How will if we need to go? What can we save? What will be lost? How many others are caught in the urgency of these choices? Where do the flames hunger and seethe?
Deborah:Where do the deer run for their lives as the great furs ignite and fall? How many fires must the land withstand before we find our way? Oh, where are you burning?
Sue:Wow, Deborah. That was so scary, actually. Yeah. They're just this the thought you You paint such a clear picture of just looking at the coming threat, the rolling smoke. I don't know, think it was during the pandemic when we also had a pandemic, wild fire, and then oh, Black Lives Matter.
Deborah:Yeah, right.
Sue:At almost the same time. Yeah. Mhmm. It was just, it felt like a confluence of catastrophes.
Deborah:Yes,
Sue:And it you paint that with, from the cabin porch I search the horizon through haze and trees and I can exactly see myself here. It's a beautiful way to situate the reader right alongside you and you do this really well in other poems too. Pull us right in with very strong visual and sensory detail. That strange amber light is one that I remember waking up to one day and thinking, oh my gosh, and there was a red sun in the sky like Chan's last days.
Deborah:Yes, That's
Sue:that's kind of mania. This small detail really magnifies the horror of the impending threat and I really love the way that you do this nonetheless still somewhat understated because negative space is where my imagination runs How will we know if we need to go is a huge question. Know, go bag by the door. How long do you wait? I love the staccato repetitive urgency that it captures and the panicked thinking as well.
Sue:And that's another reason why, oh my gosh, we have to have a plan because in those crises moments.
Deborah:You can't think.
Sue:You just can't think right. I love that, where do the flames hunger and seethe and it's taking on almost like a living organism idea.
Deborah:Like your dragons.
Sue:Yeah. How many fires must the land withstand before we find our way? Is an echo of something that we talked about in the last episode with having to work with nature rather than against it. Yes. So I was wondering, could you give some context for when and where you wrote this?
Deborah:This was the summer of the Dixie Fire, which was a huge fire in Northern California, just 20 or 30 miles from our cabin, which is situated off of Route 49 near Sierra City, kind of close to Downeyville. That's the nearest big town.
Sue:It's in the foothills.
Deborah:Yeah. And we intentionally don't have WiFi up there. We don't have a phone. So keeping track of what was going on with the fires was tricky. We were driving out every day to the ridge where we could get reception to check on the fires.
Deborah:But it just felt scary because, I mean, what if we didn't drive out fast enough and the fire was already getting really close? You couldn't really tell from the smoke where the fire was because it was all enveloping. So tell me tell us a
Sue:little bit about how this poem came to you. Did it come fully formed? Talk a little bit about the process of writing this.
Deborah:It was really on the deck looking at that haze when the line the opening line came to me, which is also the last line. Oh, California, where are you burning? And I like the rhythm of it. And I think without even thinking about it, really, the rhythm carried me into the stanza that is right before the end. Where do the flames hunger and seethe?
Deborah:Where do the deer run for their lives? Yeah. Yeah.
Sue:So it sounds you do let your imagination just sort of unspool a little bit.
Deborah:Yeah, I like that process that you described in the last prompt from yesterday's episode, where you said, Just let your imagination go. Don't censor.
Sue:Mhmm.
Deborah:I think that's super important because you never know what links your mind is going to make. And I think, actually, I'm still learning this. I'm probably not as wild I know I'm not as wild a poet as many poets are. I tend to be fairly linear and rational and clear. But in that process of letting the words stumble onto the page, you really can access parts of your your spirit, your brain.
Deborah:Maybe not even your spirit, your brain. Maybe other entities that are communicating with you, and you end up with some great connections that you don't anticipate.
Sue:That idea of sinking beneath the surface and following a fish, which is kind of what that whole title
Deborah:Exactly. Is
Sue:it's so hard to do in an age where we have so many distractions and so much information. I was reading a couple of days ago something about go for a walk without listening to a podcast.
Deborah:Yes. I mean, we'd love you all to listen to us, but don't. Sometimes just don't. Sometimes just be in that silence, because really it's from the silence, from the internal space, that this connection happens.
Sue:It's like watching something float up to the surface. Hopefully not a dead body. Hopefully something kind of interesting, but interesting connections to our own subconscious and maybe to a more communal subconscious as well. I kind of love that idea. I suppose it touches on the idea of grace perhaps.
Deborah:Yes, I think so. When it works out, it definitely I'm feels like
Sue:sure you also have this experience, and many poets and artists generally, where I know that Bach did, not that we're anything like that but he felt that he almost had some other direction for where the music came from. Like, was
Deborah:just Yes. Was just the channel. And a lot artists have said similar things. Yeah.
Sue:You said you you said fire hungers and seeds. Do you see fire as a kind of living thing?
Deborah:I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sue:Have you ever seen that movie Backdraft? No. It was a long time ago, and it was about I don't wanna give too much away, but it was about firefighters and their relation to fire. And it very much was about fire as
Deborah:a living, breathing thing. Yeah, that's powerful. I mean, think we talked last time about anthropomorphization and how that's probably actually a really important thing to access for building our relationship to the natural world. I think not just in relation to living things, but also to what we think of as non living entities, like fire. If we grant them a spiritual agency, I think we're much more likely to have respect for them and let them be a part of the whole ecosystem.
Sue:That's really interesting, what you just said. And that's also something that's an indigenous piece of wisdom. If you tell stories of personified nature, whether it's fire, whether it's god of volcanoes, whether it's a river goddess, it's much more difficult to justify hurting or messing with those things than it is if you just look upon them as a sort of scientific thing or as something that you can get money from somehow.
Deborah:Something to exploit.
Sue:To exploit. Yeah. Shift between the big picture of California and the tiny details of, say, the deck railings, and I this is something you do in your other poems too. It's really effective. I was wondering what your advice for beginning poets for how to get started, and maybe some questions to ask themselves as they come back and edit.
Deborah:You might find yourself taken by a detail. I think so often, a detail that we really enter into can be the nucleus of a poem because it's that quality of attention that is the entry to that whole world of the subconscious and of the interconnected world that we live in. So, yeah, let something like a teapot or a leaf or a worm or whatever you see on your walk be the entry point. I think you'll feel that sort of spark of connection when it feels like a detail that grabs you, and then just see where it takes you.
Sue:It's such an interesting connection. I like to take photographs, and finding a detail that speaks to me, either as something to write about as a visual, as a word picture, or something as an actual picture, changes the way in which I experience the world. And that idea of focused attention is something that I often feel that I kind of lack. I mean we're in what's called an attention economy right now. Yeah.
Sue:And Mary Oliver, I think, had a lovely quote about attention. Yes. Something about, it's all there is. I can't remember it
Deborah:right now. Can't remember it right right
Sue:can't can't remember right
Deborah:can't absolutely right that it runs counter to the way that our lives are structured so often right now in this typical Western world that we live in hyper developed, hyper active. But it's so important, I think, not just for creative people, but for all of us to find a way to slow down and let the attention blossom.
Sue:So I want to remind listeners that the poetry open mics is something you can write for. And sometimes it's helpful to have that place where you know that what you write might get some light, some light of day. I'm going to reread Deborah's poem Dry Lightning. Oh California, where are you burning? From the cabin porch, I search the horizon through haze and trees.
Sue:The deck rails I stained only yesterday with their cut out pattern of swallows in flight, glow orange in this strange amber light. How will we know if we need to go? What can we save? What will be lost? How many others are caught in the urgency of these choices?
Sue:Where do the flames hunger and seethe? Where do the deer run for their lives as the great furs ignite and fall? How many fires must the land withstand withstand before we find our way? Oh, California, where are you burning? Today, we're going to include a second poem by Deborah.
Sue:Deborah wrote a lovely one called The Return of the Golden Crowned Sparrows and we wanted to end on a note that is about regeneration and the resilience of nature and I think this poem captures that so well, because we actually didn't want to leave you in another pool of despair. So here's Deborah reading her her poem.
Deborah:Return of the Golden crowned Sparrows. And I should mention this one was published in an anthology from Blue Light Press called Pandemic Puzzle Poems. I call the golden crowned sparrows. And one, two, three, four, they flutter down and light on the stone lip of the fountain to play in the falling stream, washing from wings and throats the dust of their long journey, the ash of wildfires, sending up a blaze of droplets in the October sun. They answer me with a clear whistle, three equal notes descending.
Deborah:Do, Ti, So. We are here, they seem to say. We have returned even though the hills are still burning. We have seen from the sky the flash of water, a glint in Earth's eye promising rest, and we have come back again.
Sue:Thank you, Deborah. Beautiful. I particularly like the ash of wildfires sending up a blaze of droplets in the October sun, because that really turns this pretty story that I was expecting, and it takes a somewhat darker tone here. I liked the flash of water, a glint in the earth's eye promising rest, and it also gives a little tiny glint of hope. And we have come back again, and this landing is on a kind of forgiveness.
Sue:It feels like there's a resilience and forgiveness in nature. The surprising turn towards the sparrows point of view, I thought was particularly effective. The quiet hope that might live in other species that might be wired into the resilience of nature more generally. This is another understated but deeply serious reflection on wildfire, although this time without the human cause element. How did you come to write this?
Sue:Maybe a little bit about where and how.
Deborah:Sure. I was taking a poetry workshop that was offered through Blue Light Press by Diane Frank, the editor there, and she had invited invited a poet named Ellery Akers, who is just a beautiful, beautiful poet who had written a book called Swerve, which is an ecofeminist book. It's divided into three sections, one on the environment, one on feminism, and one on resilience. And she gave a prompt based on one of her own poems, and the prompt was just I call. So I used that to start the poem.
Sue:I love actually, I've been doing quite a lot of work with prompts given by I do this thing called round robin writing that is done by Cathy Garlick through the writing salon in Berkeley. And they give you these random prompts and they're actually quite well thought out, I suspect, I don't But it's amazing what those can access.
Deborah:Yeah, it is.
Sue:It's not always something that just comes to
Deborah:you. It's like,
Sue:so you took a class maybe that's something we could put in show notes, I'll repeat that about where people can go for poetry classes or for writing classes. Great idea as well. Yep. Good. So tell us a little bit about the role of wildfire in your imagination and your concerns, and has it changed over the years?
Deborah:It's definitely changed. I mean, as we were talking earlier, you know, I grew up in the Smokey the Bear era where you were taught that wildfire was bad, needed to be suppressed. All fires needed to be put out, And it's been a very gradual shift. Also, wildfire has become such an out of control element of our lives here in California over the past few years. But I think the biggest shift in myself has been the understanding that we need to understand fire as regenerative.
Deborah:We need
Sue:to use controlled burns. Yeah. Yeah, that was a surprise to me too, because we're the same generation. And actually, controlled burns, the fire department gets all kinds of calls from people, and there's quite a lot of controversy about where and how they do it.
Deborah:Well, is controversial. I mean, we have this ingrained fear of fire, and we're not we're not taught to respect it. We're taught to be afraid of it. We're not taught to use it as a positive force.
Sue:Right. Right. Have you seen in either when you've been writing other poems or just in your life, other signs of nature's resilience and almost forgiveness?
Deborah:Always. Always. I'm just always so struck by this constant resilience at Seventh. I just feel, again and again, all you have to do is just allow nature to have half a chance, and it will bounce back. And it may not always do it in the way that you expect or even the way that you want it to, but it will.
Deborah:It will bounce back. Yep. I was just the other day feeling so grateful because after years of not seeing robins around our garden, we saw a whole flock of them again. So, yeah.
Sue:Yeah. There's the rewilding movement, which is particularly big in Europe.
Deborah:I love that.
Sue:There's intensively farmed lands. I was just listening to rewilding rivers in The Netherlands. And they've got, I can't believe this, wolves have come back to this area of The Netherlands where they've allowed the rind to go kind of wild, and it's an amazing story. And it's a story that is a triple win for the economy, for flooding, and the resilience to flooding of homes near there, for farmers, for the people who run these clay mining factories or operations, and for nature.
Deborah:Yes, absolutely. That's a beautiful story. In the Sierra Valley near where our cabin is, even though this whole area is under threat from wildfire all the time, there's been a huge coalition of the local ranchers who love the birds and want to do everything they can to return a lot of that acreage to being the bird refuge that it always has been historically, and those birds are coming back.
Sue:Yeah. I mean, some of it is motivated by just by love Mhmm. As opposed to only being also economic. Yeah, exactly. Economics, love, and nature can coexist, and I believe that that is the way forward.
Sue:It's called the co use of working lands.
Deborah:Yep, that's so powerful. And when people that use nature, like for example, the farmers themselves using that acreage to grow crops, crops also love the birds and went to see them return and they realized they can both have the farms and provide a refuge. Or the fishermen who love to fish and realize that unless they get together and protect the resources that they love so much, the fish aren't always going to be there.
Sue:Right.
Deborah:It can be these unlikely coalitions of people that you wouldn't think would be environmentalists, but they become environmentalists.
Sue:Yes. It's something that kinda goes much more across political boundaries than you might think. Yeah. Because people who fish feel for the fish. I mean, almost literally.
Sue:People who farm love the land.
Deborah:And they're the same people that have big, huge red, white, blue flags hanging from their tractors by their roadside, but they're protecting bird refuges.
Sue:Right. And actually duck hunters and the Sierra Club worked really closely to preserve marshes in this Sacramento Valley. So that, I mean, I don't mean to suggest that this is all happy clappy stuff. There right now is a real threat to the Cordell Bank Marine Sanctuary. And you know, if that threat becomes real, it's going to kind of ruin fisheries potentially around here.
Sue:If you like fish There and
Deborah:are serious threats, but so often I think that if we can just somehow help to publicize these. Right. Even small local stories of resilience and resurgence and people cooperating to return, to restore nature, it's very powerful for us to have that. We need to have hope in order to make the big things happen.
Sue:That is absolutely true because gloom and doom does not persuade people. Right, it
Deborah:just you makes curl up in a ball and Exactly,
Sue:exactly. And to that end, Wendy Water and I are going to be running a, it's called Restoring Nature, Restoring Ourselves, Ourselves and it's going to be a community forum every month where people have five minutes each to share something about the resilience of nature, about a possible solution, about, I don't know, photographs that they took on holiday that are absolutely beautiful, something that's going on in their neighborhood, whatever. Fabulous. But it's very much angled towards a positive and realistic view.
Deborah:Yes. Oh, so important.
Sue:Thank you so much. I'm going to reread your poem. Return of the Golden Crowned Sparrows. I call the Golden Crowned Sparrows, and one, two, three, four, they flutter down and light on the stone lip of the fountain to playing in the falling stream, washing from wings and throats the dust of their long journey. The ash of wildfire sending up a blaze of droplets into the October sun.
Sue:They answer me with a clear whistle, three equal notes descending, Do, ti, so. We are here, they seem to say. We have returned even though the hills are still burning we have seen from the sky. The flash of water, a glint in the earth's eye, promising rest, and we have come back again.
Deborah:Here is this week's prompt, and this is with gratitude and credit to Ellery Acres, who gave us this prompt in a blue light press workshop, the prompt that inspired my sparrow poem. In her poem, which is called We Have the Power to Pull Back from the Brink, and was published in her book Swerve from Blue Light Press, she repeats the words, I call. I call water. I call snow geese. I call the shapes of leaves.
Deborah:I call fire, and fire answers. Let the power of this invocation return to you, to us, what we love, even what has been lost or what is threatened. Send your responses to us at curiositycatpodcast@gmail.com. If you wish, you can send a recording as a dot WAV file.
Sue:There will be more information about wildfire trends, causes, prevention, indigenous practices, the history of firefighting in the show notes for the Wildfire episodes, and there's also a link to the podcast about what it's like to be a firefighter in Contra Costa County, California. Poetry. It's a grounding, healing thing to do in this age of nature and political turmoil. A little bit of distilled feeling and thought made visible and relatable. A tentative tentacle to find people with similar hopes and anxieties.
Sue:So don't forget to share, subscribe, and as usual, badger your friends to listen and to write. Thank you so much for listening. The music is composed by John Partridge and played by him and Deborah on the flute. Production and editing by me, Sue Boudreaux, here in El Sobrante, California.