A Conversation with a Firefighter

A Conversation with a Firefighter

Seth Wieck

For Dexter

“I will endeavor to treat the progress of the two cities (the earthly and the heavenly) which are in this present world, entangled together” — Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Book 11.

In a conversation with a firefighter
a week later, he tells me the jaws of life
were mute, and our Justice of the Peace
pronouncing death, mere formality.

It’s a confession, I realize, three red ales in,
and he doesn’t play on Words or truck in
Metaphors. He uses a civil servant’s plain
language. Location and Time of the in-

cident, hedged for the public, details pulled
like punches. I haven’t asked. He doesn’t know I
knew her. That in the week since her dying,
I did what I knew to do—give her lines.

But the lines were mine, lanes for my grief,
or for the grief of my City, who attended
her funeral. His service to our city
is to see for us what we shouldn’t see,

that if we should see, our fear would flay our Peace;
expose our safety as paltry painted lines.
Space between lanes is a sheer pall. The fires he fights
are ancient on altars to appease capricious gods.

His company mounted the city’s red truck.
Each man passed a punchline back and raised a chuckle.
Their sole human acknowledgement they saw what they saw.
The Justice of the Peace spoke to the news.

---

Seth Wieck
Poet & Writer

Seth's poetry and stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine, the Langdon Review of the Arts, and the Broad River Review where he won the Ron Rash Award in Fiction. He lives in Amarillo with his wife and three children. You can read more of his work at sethwieck.com.

Photography by Ozzy Stern