Diwali in Wildfire Season

High-voltage power lines above tree tops:
what we see from our apartment windows.
The neighbors are celebrating Diwali,
a triumph of light over darkness.

The winds shift and we can smell wildfire
in the county a hundred miles north of us.  
These gusts can snap a cable apart
and spread the burn over countless acres. 

To preempt the risk of igniting more, 
the utility company decides
to shut off large expanses of their grid: 

a million without electricity 
left to rely on candles, batteries, 
and the kindness of those with generators.