Housekeeping

I drove through a forest-fire once. Smouldering embers leapt, tigerlike, from crackling ground. Nested in the pine branches, a mimicry of the birds they displaced, theirs the song of spring and new beginnings even so.

The sap pops and simmers, life-blood rendered fuel. Flames leap onwards, transiently.

Capricious, the heat touches only what it will, waltzing some yet-unknown minuet en pointe over ruin that Smokes gently, but is the promise of fresh ground; Waits placidly for seeds, cases split open in conflagration to poke stubbornly through the ashes— And, in time, to feed on them.

Would that we renewed ourselves with such civility.