Yarnell Eulogy

Published in the Blue Collar Review.

For the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots killed protecting the town of Yarnell, Arizona, when a wildfire went out of control on June 30, 2013.

Hotshot. They say you have to love it a little to hate it so much
and on a day like any other day a fire

like any other fire surrounded and took you: burnover, they
call it, when there’s no place to go but 

into the flames. Watching the fire come nearer and you’re already
closer to it than anyone else would dare, hotshot,

and the wind whips it into a frenzy and in the end there’s nothing
you can do but die. You laughed in the bars

where girls’ eyes sparkled like diamonds when you told them who you
were: the bravest of the brave, the ones running

up steep mountainsides, the ones dashing toward the flames when others
run away. And the girls? The girls knew:

there is no love in the darkness more exciting than loving one who risks
his life. Their diamond eyes shimmered

and life held nothing but promise: weddings and cookouts, the quiet
of home and if you ever stopped to think

about it, you would think it was something worth protecting. No time
now for that, only to hope that some of you

would somehow survive for you all, the shelters would work,
you’d come out hot and exhausted

and watch the flames go on. Oh, hotshot. For all the boys who
will never again fight the flames I ask: 

why did the earth not tremble, why was your loss not painted
across the skies? For all the boys 

who will never again fight the flames I ask: would you do it
again, enter the brotherhood, take

the risks, walk on the edge? For all the boys who will never
fight the flames again I ask:
what meaning did you leave to be salvaged from the fire?