crowded over with ancient sentiments and senescent rhymes,
waiting for a spark to drop, a lighting bolt from the sky
which alights one leaf, written off and forgotten,
yet filled with potential to torch her brothers and sisters.
One by one they catch, and the crowded forest floor becomes a smoldering blanket,
suffocating with a damp heat, all fresh life that may infringe upon its task.
Each leaf becomes a stream of smoke that fills the air
until no living thing could survive, nor breath,
nor could see through the opaque cloud of consumption, saving the poet himself.
For he knows each tree intimately, standing or fallen,
because he planted them, and he alone cut them down.
Each bush belonged to him because he cared for and fed them
with his own love and attention.
And each flower, blistering now, pushed up only because he wished its existence.
The fire chases down and snuffs every frame to ash, smoke, or soot.
The inferno peaks and plummets, carrying its casualties into oblivion.
The forest calms and the poet sweeps arduously over the landscape;
for any sign of remaining life must be consumed.
The blackened, burnt trees, still stand tall
among the smoldering corpses of their noble children;
they remain proud, having given their best blossoms to heated passion: his art.
And as the first rain washes away the magnificence of his ink stained opus,
time begins to pass, the critic calls, and the wildfire’s work comes to age.
The poet however, resumes his ritual deference to the forest,
doggedly fortifying each seed with the pleasure of his natural experience,
for the promise of another brilliant blaze.
