Approaching May 1st, 2026, Anniversary of The Great Fire, Jacksonville, FL

We long for rain.  We pray for rain.

The rain reigns from on high.

The state, it burns and Fortune turns,

And smoke gets in our eyes.

The day the city burned

More than a century ago,

That day created Riverside,

Created all we know.

The swamp moss factory made a mattress,

Made an awful spark,

And as the swamp moss smoldered,

Downtown shouldered flames, which arced

And drove the people to the water

From their wood frame homes,

And blocks and blocks lay flat and ashen,

Chimneys, their headstones.

We smell the acrid blood of Hades,

See the floating ash,

And cough as we traverse our doorstep,

Taking out the trash,

But all goes on as usual.

The fire’s not on us yet,

Though statewide maps confirm we’re cornered,

Ringed by fire.  Don’t fret,

Out West, they do this every year,

A town or two succumbs

To fire before the year-end’s near.

We hate it when it comes.

We, who once scorned humidity

And longed for dryness, shade—

We’d never trade a drop, to ape

Pacific Palisades.

For another fire-related piece, read Fire Escape, a flash fiction about the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, or Moon Ate the Dark (poetry submission) about the Georgia swamplands burning so as to affect the appearance of the moon in Northeast Florida. For a poem on the perils of looking back, read Nostalgia.