A Sad Day

by Michael Seese

The world seems a little heavier these past few days. As I mentioned in my previous post, last weekend we went to the annual music party in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. It was a wonderful event, though bittersweet.

Then came the sucker punch.

On Tuesday, we got an email from our friend Ray, who said the Inn had caught fire. For all intents and purposes, it burned to the ground. The only reason it didn't literally was because the exterior walls are all foot-thick blocks of stone.

Our loss -- that of a place we loved to meet friends -- is trivial compared to the loss suffered by the owner, our friend Megin. She and her son got out unscathed. But Megin lost her livelihood and her home. (She lived on the third floor.)

You can Google "Century Inn fire" to read about it and see pictures. But here's one -- probably copyrighted, but I don't care -- which really hits home with me.

Forty-eight hours before these pictures were taken, my family was sleeping in the room circled in red.

 

 In one of the articles, the head of the local historical society said it was like a death in the family.

He's right.

"Fire," My First Example Of "Poetree"

On Labor Day, my family and I visited the Geauga County Fair. On the way there--along Route 87 and incidentally almost across the road from where I went to summer camp--I saw an old, barkless tree. I thought it looked like a skeleton hand. As my mind ran over the image, I thought it would make a good poem. I thought about it a little more, and realized that having the picture, and then writing the poem, would be even better. I thought still more, and came up with a few other ideas for poems which just needed an appropriate tree, and I saw some trees which I thought would make a good poem. 

I still need to get a picture of the skeleton hands tree. I'm working on the poem. But I have several photos, and several poems, in progress.

But below is the first that have both image and words, together and completed.

Fire

The waning vestiges of summer sun
Pass fire to the leaves when autumn comes.
The longer rays give way to shorter days.
No longer sky, but Earth which seems ablaze.
In crimson, copper, auburn, orange, saffron
The palette of the summer sun lives on.

As always, comments are welcome.