Wildfire

a poem

Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash

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Wildfire

It doesn’t take much, these days,
to spark a wildfire in conditions
rife with reckless rot and hot spots.

A lightning strike,
a shaft of sunlight heating
shards of glass,
a cigarette carelessly thrown
from a car window,
a campfire left smouldering,
a spray of sparks from a train 
screeching along rusty tracks,
and there you have it:
a wildfire on your hands.

Flames burst and catch bone-dry grass,
spreading fire that snakes and sweeps
through brush and bush, driven
and fueled by strong, hot winds.
Parched underbrush ignites, lighting trees
and shooting sparks and embers 
into the rippling, shuddering air,
combusting brittle branch and twisted limb,
candling skyward into flailing crowns
and burning down through the floor
and deep into the roots.

First feet, then miles and acres,
the fire consumes fields, farms, valleys, 
razes homes and buildings, panicking
residents as they flee for their lives.
Wider, higher, the flames roar
up hillsides and mountainsides, 
incinerating everything in their path, 
until there’s a raging hellfire 
no rain cloud can extinguish,
no plane can waterbomb,
no retardant can smother,
no firefighters can battle
with hose, axe and machine.

And when the blaze burns itself out,
all that’s left is skeletal structures,
blackened ruins, torched trees,
charred stumps, smoking roots
and scorched earth.
In beds of incubating soot and ash,
cones crack, pods pop, seeds split.
When at last rain falls for days
and nights on fertile ground,
what strange, new life will be born  
at last to rise?

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