Alaska’s burning. Unprecedented. Tinder dry
on the tundra, “You just have more material to burn”.
Forty thousand lightning strikes in four days,
six million acres in flames. This is the arctic.

The roof of our house is on fire, forests torched,
glaciers dissolving. The blue eyes of their melt-
water pools stare up at us under the helicopter.
Still there is unbelief, laughing emojis on Facebook,

twittering abuse – conspiracy, wokeism – while
the fires are burning hotter, deeper.
“We hope for rain,” the fire chief says,
“but hope is not a strategy for fighting fire”.