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BUSHFIRE
                                                               by Frank Halliwell..
                                                                     Jimboomba, Australia

The sun hangs like a furnace in the brassy sky at noon,
All living things are hiding from it's blaze.
The sultry air surrounds us like a smothering cocoon,
The distance is a dusty, shimmering haze.

The old, dead gum stands gauntly on the highest point of ground.
Two almost fledged young hawks prepare to fly,
While mother hawk sits watching with the game that she has found,
Until her newly fledged have had their try.

The ever shifting puffs of wind become a steady breeze
And swing around into the north northwest.
It strips the last of moisture from the grasses and the trees
And gently rocks the fledglings in their nest.

The months of drought have turned once verdant land a lifeless brown,
The earth is parched and cracking from the heat.
The trees are dry as bulldust from the roots up to the crown.
A week of steady rain would be a treat.

But down along the river to the west, below the ridge,
It seems that fate has formed a different plan,
For a curl of smoke is rising from the grass beside the bridge.
For whatever reason, here the fire began.

Timid at first, the flames advance across the earth's dry face
Toward the litter lying thick beneath the trees.
And a bone dry bush says 'welcome', to the flames' torrid embrace
And the sparks go swirling downwind on the breeze.

And where they touch the flames spring up to spread the fire wide
And the insects die in millions in the grass..
As the questing flames seek out the spots where they have run to hide
And the searing heat leaves nothing room to pass.

Emboldened now, it crackles on along the river bank
As the choking smoke goes streaming towards the trees.
And up the slope beside the track through herbage dry and rank
And it vaults across the narrow road with ease.

Both predators and hunted watch it come in great dismay,
Their enmity forgotten in the quest
To find a sanctuary: somewhere safe to get away
From the monster that's approaching from the west.

But the beast pursues them upward through the thickets and the glades
And hastens flying feet with searing breath.
'Til a rocky wall confronts them, and all hope of refuge fades,
As capricious fate metes out a fiery death.

And the fire spares no pity as it rages up the slope
With it's smoke and heat and flame that act as goads
To the mass that flee before it, with evaporating hope
As the superheated canopy explodes.

It cascades burning embers as it leaps from tree to tree
And spawns the fires' offspring far and wide.
Two scared young hawks await their fate in their remote eyrie
As the fire charges up the mountainside.

The hot wind is a living thing, a servant to the beast:
To this ever changing monster without form,
And the oxygen it carries garnishes it's master's feast..
As it feeds the all-consuming firestorm.

The eyes recoil from blinding smoke, the skin, from scorching heat
And the flying sparks attack like angry bees.
Each breath's a painful, gasping chore, the lungs are near defeat,
And the fearsome roar is echoed from the trees.

At the plateau's edge it falters, here the boulders thickly lie,
And the grass and scrub grow sparsely here and there,
And without the fuel to feed it, it must very quickly die,
And the hot wind wails a note of pure despair.

The blood-red sun descends to earth beyond the ravaged plains
To be swallowed up beneath the distant seas,
And through the night the hungry flames consume what fuel remains,
Punctuated by the crash of falling trees.

The new day arrives in glory, with a sunrise to amaze
The like of which is seen by very few,
But it lights a scene of stygian murk and drifting smoky haze,
With blackened ruin the only thing in view.

The old dead tree is burnt out and lies shattered on the ground.
No sign of life near what was once a nest.
But the morning holds a promise, as a distant rumbling sound
Comes from thunderheads that rise out to the west.

Yesterday was full of losers but it's often something wins.
Now the sound of thunder echoes on the breeze,
And in the sky above the ridge as this new day begins,
Three hawks soar high above the blackened trees.
                                      o0o
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