then gone, having waited this long to bolt

like a ball of light that breaks from the skin

of the sun; that explodes then dies. Like so,

observed through special telescopes, that is.

Lit from the front, the faces we wear

are masks, and bare hands hang down from their cuffs

like lamps. Heat to our hearts, but we each feel

the bite of frost from the nape of the neck

to the heels, a cold current through the spine

despite a hugging of duds: Russian dolls—

two shirts, three jumpers, jacket, anorak,

topped by an uncle’s outsize overcoat.

A lending of heat and light to the air

but splinters of ice in our hands and hair.

Nothing to swing the weather vane, no breeze,

but down an avenue of silent trees

a dog walks a man through a rain of leaves.

Far detail: a goods-train hauling road-stone

wheel-spins at a set of signals. Diesel.

An hour later, though, the fire deep-seated,

up to speed, at full tilt. A garage roof,

bituminous, slides forward in the heat.

A window pops from its frame. A small girl

paddles in the puddle of her own boots,

melted to her feet. A man with an oar

comes forward from the crowd with a bauble

or a silver orb on its outstretched blade—

a cooking apple cased in baking foil—

which he expertly lays at the white heart

of the flames. “For eating, later,” he says,

then stabs the fire and swipes the leading edge

of the burning oar no more than an inch

or so from the hat on the balding head

of his brother-in-law. Then shoulders it,

carries it like a banner, turns around,

and then ditches it, pitches it forward;

the sharp end finds the earth, digs in, goes out.

A grown man singes his eyebrows and screams.

And a wet dog sings in a cloud of steam.

A man who is blind walks down from his hill,

through the woods, having sensed a form of light

on his face when he raised his head, and heard

convected cinders raining on his roof.

A decent blaze, he says, but a shadow

of those in the past, of course, in the days

when smoke was mistaken for night, when fires

would singe an eyebrow from a mile away

or roast a chestnut hanging on its branch

or brown the skin through several layers of clothes.

One year his sister wore a floral blouse;

the next that she knew she was tanned with shapes

of bluets, goosefoot and morning glory.

Fires so full of the sun that each brought on

a second spring, an autumn flowering

of lilies, sesame and panic grass

and feverfew. And sickle senna too.

Another year a farmer drove a herd

of bullocks through the flames, and some came through

unscathed, but others fell, and ribs and steaks

were there to eat for those who wanted them.

But worst, the season he remembers most,

when seven children in a paper chase