Creeping Fire
Fire in the duff.
Smoke in the forest.
You come in the first faint tang of molecules
Tickling the sinus cavities
And awakening the deep brain to acrid destruction.
You look like morning fog
Birthed from crackling detritus
Licked by a scattered orange glow
Turning the red-brown needles
To white ash negatives
Held by memories into curls,
Fuller now of air than substance.
You eat at our foundations
Deconstructing along an energetic shortcut
Cheating the denizens of the cast off
And waft us into reconstruction
Into future
Wind calming
Groves
Trunks hugged by lichen
And startled
By the
Chattering
Of the sporadically moving
Squirrels.
At night you are a galaxy
Spinning in uneven arms
Of winking red dwarfs
Among the clouds of dark matter.
When your low, smoggy glow is gone
What will be left of us
But to fall to the sandy floor
At the first wind
And join the stardust.
albi