Tasmanian Devils
TASMANIAN DEVILS
The house next door
had flames in the windows
We watched from the street as
the firemen arrived, four rigs responding,
Engine Company 5 – The Tasmanian Devils
Engines and ladders, axes and hoses, abundant
testosterone surrounded and entered, laid into
that fire like an infantry platoon doing necessary
work through the hedgerows of France in the
summer of ‘44
“Cute little girl!” said the tall young man as
the water and smoke later sizzled
in the char
Twelve years later, at a different address,
three rigs responding, Tasmanian Devils and a
gasoline smell in the storm sewer system, same
tough young men, little action this time, a band
of paratroopers with no enemy in sight
The tall fire lieutenant remembered my face
but not my new wife and proffered the question
to set memory right
“How’s your little girl?” said the voice of
command with the steely gray eyes
I said “She died a year later!” and he looked through
us both, reached for the catalogue of the suffering he
had seen, shifted his gaze and called out to his men,
mounted his rig and tightened his face, surprised
once again at the number of ways that
a fireman finds death!
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