• Fire spreads, licking the
    Flowers
    The Trees
    The delicate leaves
    It spreads, hissing
    Spitting
    Fumes and flames
    Deadly and Toxic
    Thick smoke 
    Noxious
    For days on end
    And
    Nights that spread
    A sweet smothering darkness
    Soaked through in ember shadow
    The fire grows and the sky, it darkens
    And then
    As if of some higher volition
    It sizzles to a stop. 

    First fire melts into feeble sparking
    Then
    Softly
    Invisibly
    Almost too kindly
    This too is evanesced. 

    Behind is left only the
    Smoking carcass
    The quiet ashes
    The barren earth 
    And an emptiness that leers, 
    Peers faceless, noiseless, emotionless, 
    Into nothing

    Hands spin somewhere in the distance
    Yet that aisle of Death remains the same
    Withered, ungrown, utterly unchanged
    Chained to nothing
    Bound to stay
    Afraid for the return of flickering flame
    And yet, that hand still is moving
    And the fire remains away

    Audacious, at last, 
    Some green shyly peeks up
    As life is for the living
    Soon the land becomes lush. 

    The green is so greener when it sprouts from the ash
    Destruction makes beauty
    Becomes a flowering sash
    Once just a land torn by war and by flame
    Now this gorgeous green dress is all to remain.