About this time of year, when I first moved to Alaska, I wrote a little piece about fireweed. It’s become a familiar for me, seemingly always there, reflecting my mood. This flash nonfiction piece was the first thing I ever wrote about a plant which has now become one of my favorites. This summer, the piece was published in Alaska Women Speak. Enjoy!
Bombweed
We dance into summer fields, spiraling. The wind shakes our fuchsia dresses and our long, dainty fingers reach out to touch each other as we waltz. The boreal breezes kiss our cheeks as we, blushing, come out to play.
It’s the fires that attract us most. Lands laid waste, burnt and empty. In these clearings, we gather, ringing circles around ashes and not falling down. The destruction is sweet, makes room for our children. We turn the earth from chalky, blackened ash to fields of flush color. Perhaps we are weeds, pests, invasive. Or we could be pioneers, colonizing the uninhabitable ashes of fallen empires. Quite probably, we are both.
In autumn we fly, not fall. The dance becomes frenzied and summer bonnets fall off, revealing tendrils of grey, smoldering hair. It curls in the wind, puffs of dainty fluff. We cremate fallen wildflowers beneath our feet. When the light is just right our children take off, wisps of smoke filling the air. Tiny, feathery shrapnel flying out in all directions. The world is silent and floats. Sunlight scatters. It is as if we are underwater, drowning in autumn.
We rush into holes left by air raids. In blitzkrieged craters, we flourish. We are the first to jitterbug after worldwide wars. We explode as well, bursting pink in the ruins and embracing the aftermath. People look away. We are too-bright reminders that some life (not all) goes on.
As winter approaches we turn to flames ourselves, shocking scarlet and copper, saffron and gold. Brazen and scandalous, we scream one last hoorah and burn the first frosts with our colors.
We follow the lightning. We chase blitzkriegs. We chase bolts that give birth to forest fires. In the wake of fire from the sky, when the earth is still and silent and black, we thrive. The danger, the destruction, the silence eggs us on.
Springtime showers strengthen the trees. They grow tall and shade us, hiding us from the sunlight, silencing our songs. We tended the ground so they could grow, nurturing our own demise. We drown in their shadows. We suffocate and die.
There will be storms again. The lightning will return. Thunderstorms and flames and bombs will shake boreal forests. The earth will be wasted, blackened, silent. And so, we wait, until the world burns again.