Jack Yesner Week 6 - "The World is Wind, the World is Fire" by Anna Leahy

 Anna Leahy’s poem “The World is Wind, the World is Fire”, seemingly describes a dystopian universe. One singular spark can cause the “wind to become fire”, sending the world ablaze and eventually “extinguish[ing]” the population. Constant, untameable fear rules over the citizens as they live unable to know what terrible disaster lies ahead. Nothing remains in the world, except despair and ruin.

Leahy, however, is not describing a dystopian world, but the reality that she lives in every single day. Published in December 2017, this poem recaps Leahy’s innermost thoughts and emotions as a California resident that just went through the most destructive wildfire season at the time. As she painstakingly wrote, the world burned around her while she was forced to just sit and watch in panic.

At the end of the poem, Leahy makes a desperate plea to all the citizens of the world: “If we keep up our own undoing, our existence will be extinguished altogether.” This line marks a stark shift in the message of the poem. While the poem originally only despairs over the unfortunate situation of California fires, this line directly blames humans for this natural tragedy. 

Leahy’s prediction that the fires would only intensify was completely accurate. 2017’s record for most destructive wildfire season was dramatically broken in 2018, 2020, and 2021, and the growing trend is that wildfires will only continue to increase in magnitude. It is no longer an ignorable problem, and humans must take action on it before “the world will be fire”. Short term actions like controlled fires and dead-tree removals are helpful, but the true impact comes from fully combatting the effect of climate change and saving the planet.


UC Davis researchers seek pregnant women, new moms who lived near wildfires


Tonight, I wait for wind to become fire.

This wind is ocean, crash and clatter of inexorable squall, wind the world over.

I’ve misread live briefing as live briefly.


They’ve purpled the virtual landscape here for the first time.

One spark, and the wind is fire.

And how much time is enough?


Tonight’s impossible to sleep, to dream, the map too arid, the mortal coil too parched.

The heart aches like a furrowed pit without its flesh, the flare miles away, the blaze visible.

My skin feels cowardly as if with fever and also shrewd, too-nerved, all-knowing not what.


Prediction is mathematical fiction and the fact of fire and wind.

And who will be scorched? And when?

There’s no logic between sin and safety, just a crack of flame between two dark eternities.


If we keep up our own undoing, our existence will be extinguished altogether—all together, all of us

together—much sooner than eventually.

The world will be wind. The world will be fire.


Comments

  1. LiamNovember 1, 2022 at 4:31 PM

    The poem is so impactful. In it she really discusses these wildfires like you said, but when she points the blame on humans for causing these problems she is bringing out an even bigger more political topic. Global warming and the fact that humans know how the world is changing for the worse and very few people are actually making an effort to stop causing more ruin to our habitable planet. Forest fires are one cause of this phenomenon, but so much more goes on and her poem makes the topic even more emotional in a way.

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