[James Midgley]

Hi Ella. Nice to meet you.

Does mentioning a government entity preclude a poem from publication?

But anyway. I found the poem convincing in its style and, as I look at it more, fairly convincing in its material too.

A few fairly brief points: consider cutting 'bland', 'screaming', 'really' and 'itself' from S1.

The conceit which begins in S1 and is carried into S2 -- the relative harmlessness of this particular fire, which is developed into the fire's ability to renew as well as destroy, and further (in S3) into (as I take it) a broader decentering of humanity in climate change (life will indeed go on, with or without us) -- is handled well, I think.

That said, I think a different encapsulating conceit would work better than the gentleman fire -- perhaps something, again, animal-like (to match with the smoke of S1)? Or perhaps this fire is some kind of gardener, given his pruning interactions with the flora.

I always feel a little let down when a poem retreats to a pastoral image of moons and skies. That said, it works within the poem's logic fairly well here. One nit here: if mentioning the moon's rotundity, perhaps a beat is needed before its diminishing: 'fat at first, each night dwindling'. But perhaps it's just as good to remove its fatness in favour of its dwindling.

Thanks for the read. Good luck with the MFA application.