Personal Note: This poem was written after a fire that quickly spread across our family farm in January of 2014. It burned several hundred acres of grassland in a matter of hours and damaged many acres of woodland. Most of the woodland and all of the grassland has fully recovered. The fire barely spared our ~150 year old farm house on the original homestead. Though this was written in response to an actual inferno, it is intended as a metaphor. What does it mean to you? Tell me in the comments.
A single spark can light the fire.
One ember grows another.
The land is changing, the sky grows dark.
An inferno spawned by one spark’s desire.
Majestic oaks morph into coal,
the wind howls for the pain of the Earth
the wind can only make it worse.
An inferno raging out of control.
A sprint from tree-top to tree
Through the grassy fields and more.
A race across the earth.
An inferno burns the country.
It burned back to its beginning.
No more fuel to feed the glutton.
The land lays defeated, smoldering.
An inferno’s smoke is the sign of its sinning.
A scene of desolation supplants the cloud of death.
The single spark did light the fire
But the inferno’s breath has left.
A season leaves, another comes again,
The fields show signs of green
And forests start anew.
And in years to come, they that didn’t see
the inferno raging through the valley
Will smell sweet scents of daisies and wheat
and see the youthful oaks reaching for the sky.
From ashes and dust and fiery night;
the inferno brings death, but death brings new life.
