poetry

I know what it’s like to lose everything in a fire

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes lived through wildfires in Wooroloo, Western Australia, in 1997. As LA mourns, she revisits her paintings of ‘inevitable, imminent loss’

Friday 17 January 2025 07:29 EST

LOS ANGELES FIRES PHOTOGRAPH

It doesn’t matter how rich the woman is

In the newspaper selfie in which she is snapped

With a small suitcase in a large dressing room,

Wardrobes hung with the most glamorous skins

Any woman could wish to be seen in,

Because it is all going to burn.

She will become as homeless as a mother in Gaza,

Or a Ukrainian wife, standing in the anonymous rubble

Of her dismembered life. The picture is about

The shock of inevitable, imminent loss. Twice,

I witnessed the running speed of fire as it tore through

West Australian Wooroloo and my bush-edge home,

My car already packed with dog, computer, photographs,

Enough clothes for a week and a mobile phone.

The trees carried flame, tossing it between branches,

Proving the promise of flame-retardant paint

When the blackened house still stood among the embers.

I keep spidery drips from the molten aluminium

Of my studio roof

To remind me of impermanence.

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