Relapse #2

Not with a drink but with the dream of a drink it began.
The distraction of an article while working at home
mid-morning, bored and tired from the insomnia last night.
Even the fourth melatonin pill couldn’t take me down.

Not with flame but with dreams of flame, the article began.
A child with a matchbook stolen from his parents, opened
so often at night while he lay awake the cover curled.
He circled lighter fluid onto a brush pile crowned with dried leaves.

Fire took the trees by twos and threes until they were nothing
but black teeth in the gums of foothills. Swarms of water released into the sky.
Frogs began calling to each other in the heating creek and drying mud.
A herd of deer ran from where they last saw the missing family of four.

It moved east, then north, then west. Napa wineries
designed labels of torches and flame. Smoke molecules bound
to sugar under grape skins - cabernets, zinfandel, and shiraz.
They had a hint of embers and burnt blue oak trees.

Not with the dream of a drink but with a drink the fire began.
I found a headline on a deep scroll of the internet that read:
California Wine is Beginning to Taste like Wildfires.
And all the way to Maine the heat reached my tongue.

William Varner’s poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Green Mountains Review, The Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate, New Ohio Review, The Pinch, Poet Lore, Vallum, War, Literature and the Arts, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Erskine J. Prize from Smartish Pace and the Maine Literary Award. His chapbook, Leaving Erebus, was the 2019 selection for the Keystone Chapbook Series from Seven Kitchens Press. He works as a writer and editor and lives in South Berwick, ME.