In between before and after, the world was choking and burning.
A blind bolting rush,
a desperate gasp of air —
— a stampede of suffocating fear.
Dull shells gleaming, a wave of skittering arms and legs, burst from the dry cracked ground.
Fighting for the battle of their lives,
they march onwards in a drumbeat of war.
A frothing swarm of soldiers leaving pale dust in their wake.
In the tepid ponds, slippery webbed feet dig and burrow into the moist floor,
Sheltering under big rocks and shadowy logs
Safely ensconced in darkness
Cowering away from the thunder above.
When the blaze begins,
wings take flight in a whirl of motion
into the blood-orange sky
raining down a barrage of dark feathers.
Tripping over twisting roots,
a flurry of hoofed feet pound in an angry crescendo of sound.
Small paws, in a panic, dash into a trapping jaw of snapping teeth
in a blur of white smoke and movement, trying to survive the onslaught
Engulfed in a plume of bright flame and black smoke,
a towering giant creaks and groans,
crashing down onto the forest floor
crushing the unlucky few too slow to dodge away.
As the fire grows,
those huddling in the burrows, packed like sardines
and the countless still left behind
are scorched alive above and below in an inferno of heat.
By the falling night, a rising pale face dons a veil of bitter grief
for all that’s left of the place called home,
is a smoldering ruin of painful memories
blanketed by a cremation of death, a funeral for the voiceless.
By dawn, the sky will weep
covering the blistered ground with a blanket of tears,
A gentle pitter patter soothing the wounds left behind
And soon, even the embers will die too,
Hissing and sputtering a final time,
Meeting their end with a sigh of relief
And soon, the animals will return
Gingerly traversing a blackened world
Picking through the rubble of their lives
And soon, a new life will awaken from the ashes.
Pushing out and past the skeletons left behind,
What remains is a cluster of bell-shaped flowers whispering in the wind
