Velasquez / Boreal Wildfires
June 30, 2023

  In one 17th-century painting, a woman
  tips a fried egg into a bowl,
  in another, she watches water pour into a glass.
  If she noticed the boy in the corner drawing, she didn’t care.
  There is always more to be done in a kitchen.
  Like that, the world goes on about its business.
  Its light, too, about its business, even this singe-colored moon’s.
  Varnish darkens with time; a kitchen, with oil fumes.
  A Canadian boreal forest darkens with burning.
  To be orange is, tonight, the moon’s only business.
  As if, when someone sneezes, saying “Bless you!,”
  hoping the soul will once again consent to stay
  this one day longer in its body.
  One infinity can be larger than another.
  An orange moon in its watching.
  Infinite trees’ infinite trunks and twigs and branches
  crossing an ocean as infinite smoke.
  More and more, the earth becoming its own translation.
  In Seville, an orange sweetens, even in ash.