Molera Fire
From The Man in Place (1982), poems by Jack Curtis.
When our hills and white mountains
Strangle in the smoke of screaming greasewood
Gone berserk against us,
I must find a rage inside myself.
I must find within my testes more flaming hills
From generations of craters and night fires and rockslides
Than birdnests are to burn,
And I must scatter a bitter pollen
Against the burning storm,
Across the shrieking charging hillsides
I will not fall,
I remember I must not fall from any fist of flame,
Though my eyeballs fry white,
I will not surrender this house to any windy brute.
House and my raging memory,
We fight together
And share the last sip of water.
Be gone with you, Greasewood holocaust!
Elemental blasphemous pest!
I will not scrape aside nor bow down.
Upright, I accuse you with my blind eyes.
I will stun you with thunder!
By God, I will drown you in my stinking piss!
What is only mine is me,
And I am too green a house for you to burn,
And I am too mean a man to make mad!
Jack Curtis (1926-2002) was a prolific novelist, screenwriter and poet
who lived on the Big Sur coast for over fifty years and is best known
locally for his 1981 novel, Eagles Over Big Sur.
