The Burning of Yellowstone

Squaring their papers--tap, tap-- the news team finds
one last feature to catch St. Louis ears
following days of rage and roar on the screen
as feather, fur, nest, cave, hide disappears.
"Don't miss the sunset tonight or tomorrow night!"
For two thousand miles, it appears, wind bore to the eye
smoke from unseen deaths and wounds to remind us
how beautiful, at the end, is the earth, the sky.
Driving west from the towers that block our view
we find a hillside pull-off. Every sense
confounded by the vision that wraps us round,
we feel to the bone its burning radiance.
Orange daylily uncurls its lips and presses
them urgently on the blue-veined brow of space.
Rose at its ripest spreads wide its fervent petals
to welcome the other hues. An intense trace
of crushed violet scent lies on the air.
Petunia tongues a pink both sweet and clear.
Fallout of deep red peony litters the treeline.
We take each other's hand, eyes wet, and hear
how gently the wind informs its witnesses,
as jonquil yellow trumpets a floral boom,
of its debt to the artistry of their beholding,
of their culpability for its final bloom.

--Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004), US poet laureate 1992, in Poetry magazine, February 1990

In 1988, over 200 fires broke out in Yellowstone due to extremely dry conditions. A narrative of that years' fires can be found here: https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/yellowstone-ablaze-fires-1988.
Photo by Steve Henry of the National Park Service.