Baltimore Burning

Today I am dreaming of my grandmother

who in her youth saw Baltimore burn.

The Great Baltimore Fire

was written in capitals

in the memory of  her early years:

downtown in flames.

She lived on, survived one marriage

and raised four sons on her own--

taking in boarders, defying Prohibition,

making and bottling gin in the clawfoot tub

I remember from her house,

which was just round the corner

from Mayor D’Alesandro’s:

a block or two from North Avenue.

She was still there in ‘68

when Baltimore burned again;

this time, not by accident,

lit by the furious fires of death

and loss and the frustration of another time.

She is gone now,

as is (today) the CVS, and a senior center,

police cars…up in flames.

Firemen, policemen scramble;

fire engines shriek through the streets

that I recognize, her old neighborhood.

The fires outside are smaller,

but the ones inside burn bright

in places no engine can reach.

Baltimore is burning.