Category: Fire

Loss and Transformation in “Line Crew”

~ Kat Couch

That’s one dark song lol. Continuing our look at songs from Kat’s collection Snakeweed Season, we throw a curve at our presenters. They’re usually considering a business use case or supply chain logistics, but here we’ve given them the lyrics to the gritty country tune “Line Crew” based on the poem of the same name. The podcast link is below.

Video hook, “Line Crew”, Kat’s Sundog

The discussion doesn’t back away from the bleak psychology of the narrative, and in following the story, they hit most of the high points, with Glen (not his real name) providing the commentary and Joanna May guiding the discussion.

I came out of the conversation almost apologetic. The poem, from last October, is a look back with a writer’s eye to a nine-year period during which we were evacuated twice from big wildfires in the northern Colorado backcountry and threatened by a third. Homeowners form a particular grateful bond with the firefighters protecting settlements and forest, and they sometimes get a glimpse into the crews’ daily lives, two-week shifts of brutally long days, in conditions that are difficult for most folks to imagine.

What kind of toll does that take? I can’t speak to the accuracy of the story, can’t tell you if a wildland firefighter would recognize what the protagonist thinks and feels. It’s a little slice of gothic horror dressed up in yellow Nomex. Our presenters spend some time with that as well, because while they may be more comfortable with board reports, they don’t miss a trick.

Line Crew
(An Outlaw Country song by the band Kat’s Sundog)

Lyrics

[Intro, spoken over a mournful electric guitar riff]
You keep from the fire things you can’t name
Missed birthdays, an empty home,
a poker game
And you pass hurt like you pass a hat
Cause you can’t fight fire like you fight a man

[Verse 1]
We keep from the fire that we won’t be the same
Kids’ birthdays, empty houses
It’s a losing game
Fire says it’s sorry ‘bout my dog
Presses his tags in my hand with a burning log
Says that ain’t who I am, with a bitter grin
A liar in a yellow coat, a restless critter

[Pre-Chorus]
Oh, the inferno’s cryin’ black
For the houses it consumed
But it stalks ‘em like a killer
Going room to room

[Chorus]
So I work the line, and I hold my ground
The taste of ash and sweat in my mouth
It’s a devil’s dance where you find some peace
Out here among still-livin’ trees
Yeah, I work the line

[Verse 2]
I keep from the fire our prayers for rain
The stone in the creek, the mule deer’s pain
But it haunts the ridge with a cruel hot thirst
Though the one-horse town it took was the worst
It wails like it’s still got a soul to save
While it goes back to digging graves

[Pre-Chorus]
Oh, the inferno’s cryin’ black
For the houses it consumed
But it stalks ‘em like a killer
Going room to room

[Chorus]
So I work the line, and I hold my ground
The taste of ash and sweat in my mouth
It’s a devil’s dance where you find some peace
Out here among still-livin’ trees
Yeah, I work the line

[Bridge]
But I told that fire where I keep my gun
Said, “I’ll never leave ‘til this war’s done”
And in the chill before the sun
I saw it curled up, weary and worn
Like a child, like a red wolf bitch
In a den of burning pitch

[Dueling guitars, gritty, soaring]

[Chorus]
So I work the line, and I hold my ground
The taste of ash and sweat in my mouth
It’s a devil’s dance where you find some peace
Out here among still-livin’ trees
Yeah, I work the line

[Outro, the lone guitar riff from the intro]
You keep from the fire
You’re no longer the same…
Hell, your breath is smoke
And your eyes are gone
And your godless hands
Are wild with flame…
[Fade out]

You can listen to the song here:
https://suno.com/s/RswUHvGpIUkj58PM

Line Crew Podcast

Bread

~ Kat Couch ~ Leave a comment

We walk out for the view,
a mug of Irish tea and the paper,
to celebrate the old miracles:
the crust of the Hogback, red as brick,
even with the weather coming in,
its gnarled ridges alongside the new grass,
the gun-blue lake
filling and emptying.

Heat and water and milled earth
did this landscape’s cooking.
You weren’t thinking of them
when you baked this morning,
mixing seed and almond flour,
made a well and poured the liquid in,
paid no attention to the other magic —
that’s a poet’s job:
those massive ridges buckling in the fire,
or the snowmelt topping up
the bowl of the reservoir
they submerged a whole town for,
drowned the trees
and the everyday miracles of memories /
a weathered sign
is all that’s left of Stout.

Your bread sits by the window, cooling,
beaten and belching,
and breathing out.

Firestarter

~ Kat Couch ~ 2 Comments

Mr. Springer, who resides
at the dingy bungalow
on Constance Court
that we can see from the wooden deck
of our wooden house,
and who last Saturday started the fire
that burned a thousand acres of grass
due south along the lake —

that Mr. Springer,
who the neighbors,
shortly after, bilious,
suggested should go to prison
for the rest of his too-long life,
was just connecting
an electric fence.

Sparks flew.
They do
at high school dances and in fields
and sometimes catch fire
and run for all our panic water.

But now, across the road,
through the window of his living room,
I watch him watching television,
his generator in the driveway,
and around the place, the black grass
spread the way it did / not away
the way it did,
but sharp-tongued prairie now
licking up,
darkly, acidly
against the flickering wall
of his flickering house.