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’
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.