poetry

In their beginning, they feared the dark,
so they made a law of fire.
Each breath they gave it turned to rule
and with it a hunger grew.
Each heartbeat sacrificed,
laid and served, echoed across fields
and yearned – of box and brush, and sticks and crushed.

It learned to spread
on their submissions.
It learned to lash,
new tongues of order.
It erupted silence where questions lived,
grew ashen walls where pathways went.

What once was wild reduced to embers,
it multiplied itself in mirrors,
cross planes and forests,
to ends of oceans.
A thousand hands, new protocols,
a thousand lives and lores and lands brought – crashing,
to their ends.

Yet, in their law they forgot the river’s meander,
the wave of trees and grass and flowers,
the embrace of place, peace and nature’s powers.

They lost their ways in unruly oceans,
and in frustration sought new submissions.
The wild unspoke their foundation,
so they taught metal, machine, and destination,
but in its law and transit brought
chaos, death and empty depictions.

Still, neath the fire charcoaled skin of Leviathan
a murmur swells, soft with memory,
feral with possibility. For fire itself
is nature born, and Country speaks for
all to learn.