Dick Van Dyke flees his Malibu home

in the wake of the Franklin Fire just
a couple days from his ninety-ninth
birthday. I imagine him composed,
still able to sidestep that pesky
ill-placed ottoman on his way out
the door even in old age. Only
instead of his house, the apartment
in New Rochelle, that stylish “wedge” couch,
everything mid-century modern.
And it is Mary Tyler Moore, not
his wife braced by his side. The whole scene
is black and white, a little grainy,
the contrast just a little too sharp
for grasping any of it. He posts
online that the evacuation
went smoothly except for his pet cat,
Bobo, who escaped. Then I recall
how someone once said (I don’t know who)
Life’s a tragedy for those who feel,
a comedy for those who think, which
makes me chuckle, begin to muse that
with the right ensemble cast, a few
well-timed puns, and a happy ending,
the search for the feline possibly
could make a good sitcom episode.
For now, we have a cliffhanger though—
chaos and smoke, a brain the size of
a human pinky, its owners gone,
how the loneliness of an orange
tabby cat maybe sheltered within
a culvert or some other dark out-
of-the-way place catches in our throats
like dust, as bushes and weeds ignite
in our minds, that red wall of heat now
pushing against the backs of our eyes.