December Spirits

December morning and already life is withdrawing into the shade. The air has the smell of smoke blowing down from bushfires burning up north. The sun wears a red glow. The veneer of normality begins to crack under heat to reveal what's beneath, a furnace of fire. It's the way of the land, primed as it is with a vapour of eucalyptus oil hanging in a blue haze waiting for an errant spark to ignite the very air. There is a strange beauty to it all when seen from a distance, the tinted sky, the play of light through clouds of ash, too far away to feel the heat or hear the roar. Each summer the spirits stir and emerge in flame from the charcoal chambers of their ancient past as if to remind us that we trespass.