"First Fire" by Camille T. Dungy

Camille Dungy is a poet and editor who earned a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She has won various awards and fellowships for her writing, and is currently a professor of English at Colorado State University.

First Fire
by Camille T. Dungy

Stripped in a flamedance, the bluff backing our houses
quivered in wet-black skin. A shawl of haze tugged tight
around the starkness. We could have choked on August.

Smoke thick in our throats, nearly naked as the earth,
we played bare feet over the heat caught in asphalt.
Could we, green girls, have prepared for this? Yesterday,

we played in sand-carpeted caves. The store we built
sold broken bits of ice plant, empty snail shells, leaves.
Our school’s walls were open sky. We reeled in wonder

from the hills, oblivious to the beckoning
crescendo and to our parent’s hushed communion.
When our bluff swayed into the undulation, we ran

into the still streets of our suburb, feet burning
against a fury that we did not know was change.




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