(no subject)

[apiphile]

greenery from blackening

in western america
and australia there are trees
whose lives are so often scarred
by serious conflagration
that they require an inferno
simply to germinate;
see how easy it is
for survivors to turn
what they have suffered
into their necessity.

the carpathian mountains once held
mythical avians whose millennia of life
terminated in inferno
on pyres deliberately constructed
to house their infant selves
in the aftermath of the heat;
see how easy it is
to be prepared only
for the worst to come.

we who have placed our childre in boats
close to sinking, and waded out
into uncertain waters;
we who have crowded freezing
at harshly-guarded borders
peppered with shot for the chance
to bleed in a hospital bed
instead of the naked street;
we who have yet to untangle
the touch of love
from the terror of a raised fist
cannot afford to be patient
but can teach every luckier man
what it is to become fireproof.

in our scars may you learn
the truth behind propaganda
and distorting lightbulb flashes;
may you never have to know
what was burned,
and what arose from the ashes.