Slash Burn Rainbow

Smoke from the slash burns

hangs on the hills.

Soon, slash burns will have gone

the way of bloodletting.

But for now, they glow in the distance,

and send up a brown and orange haze

that brings to mind that song,

“Smoke From a Distant Fire,”

by the one-hit wonder, Sanford-Townsend Band,

the greatest slash burn song in rock history,

played by a band that never saw or smelled

a slash burn.

That song is playing, right now,

as I drive toward a rainbow

shooting and curling out of the haze,

a song on AM radio,

sandwiched between two Save-Me-Jesus stations

fire and brimstoning about the

end of the world.

Rain fell somewhere in the hills,

I know it did.

A rainbow is all the proof I need,

of the presence of rain,

and other good things.