[Editor’s Note: With Halloween beckoning, the academician Janet Hoult, one of the Westside’s more creative minds, penned this work while worrying her over daughter and grandson in San Diego. They were caught in the Witch Creek fire, but now they are safe.]
Hallowe’en witches and devils
should come only once each year
to bring laughter and fun to everyone without any question of fear.
This year the devil came early
and linked itself up with a witch
The Witch is a fire and the Devil a wind that works into a feverish pitch.
My uncle had told me the “Devil Wind”
could make all the flames go higher
than he’d ever seen throughout the years he spent in fighting fire.
Again, this wind bedevils us
throughout our country canyons.
It’s burning brush and homes and trees, including ancient banyans.
The wind in partner with a Witch
now has forked tongues of flame
that reach far out onto the land killing trees and game.
Helped by the wind, the fire burns on, making its way to the ocean.
Combined they make a force that’s grown outside of any notion
we may have had of all these fires,
18 at latest count.
Homes lost in the 1000’s, and the figure sure to mount
We’d like to keep our firemen safe,
who put their lives in jeopardy
in order to help us keep our homes, our lives and all our property.
We hope and pray for changing wind,
that this “Devil Wind” will die,
That smoke from fires will clear away and soon we’ll see the sky.
We’d like to keep our homes intact, and let our landscape grow
So leave us quickly “Devil Wind”,
go somewhere else to blow.
