Embers fly. Sparks float.

Approached from the sky, the inhabitants' habitations 

sparsely populate the patchwork countryside, 

the neatly defined, if unproductive fields.

And I wonder if the harvest – potatoes? cabbage? –

livestock – mutton? lamb? – and catch – herring and cod? –

will be plentiful enough to make it through the winter,

the months when the ship cannot reach the island

to bring packaged, processed flavors and calories, and other signs of so-called civilization.

From above we see the wind in the treeless landscape.

At night we set alight

an effigy of what we would like our past to have been

(we, I say, an imagined community of artists, visitors, locals,

the odd atavistic goatherd, 

and the lone, pyromaniacal fireman).

But we're not alone here; the ghosts of our CO2 footprint have traveled with us

across the seas, the skies, the roads,

and all that we know and have seen and have heard before.

Embers fly.

Sparks float.

Inferno

Archipelago