This week marks five years since 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots were killed fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire. In today’s Poetry Friday segment, KNAU listener Anthony Flesch honors the fallen crew with his poem “The Nineteen.”
"The Nineteen" by Anthony Flesch
After the nineteen
firefighters
died doing
their hotshot jobs,
the smoke from
the fire that killed them
hung over our town
all day –
smoke from a funeral
pyre.
It was a visual
dirge,
and the urge
to weep was
never far,
rising up into
my throat again, and again
through the day.
I couldn’t stop myself
from trying to
imagine the scene,
and each time
the horror of it
engulfed me.
Let it burn, I say,
let our houses burn,
and our pictures,
and our passports.
Let them all burn
lest we burn more
shining sons.
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU’s Gillian Ferris. If you’d like to read a published poem, or submit an original work for consideration, drop an email to Gillian at gillian.ferris@nau.edu.
