Do They Know the Fire Approaches?

[Guest guest]

Do the trees stand huddled and embracing,

weeping as the forest fire rages closer?

Do they implore their God to give them strength,

to face the unimaginable death to come?

Do they pull with all their might to free their feet

from this earthly stranglehold?

Is the roar of the blaze's face and all its screaming

really the voice of their children from the holocaust to come?

In its fury and its anger this shrieking heat denies

the multitudinous prayers of all these trees

that are moaning through the canyon floors.

As they're consumed, these leafy, piney friends,

do they forgive the flame that burns them?

With their very last sweet breath of sky,

do they repeat as Jesus did

when he was nailed upon their carven comrade,

"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do."

Do all the little houseplants shudder as they weep

for fallen comrades being smoked in cigarettes

as swirling corpsy smoke circles round their heads?

Do they remember all the faces and the fingers

of their children gone up in rings and hands

stained with blood of cannabis and tobacco?

Do cabbages and brussels sprouts

bow their heads in grief

as plates of steaming broccoli pass by their eyes

and meet their doom in human mouths that chew

upon the friends they once cavorted with in play?

Are all these flowery, leafy children of the earth

appalled at flattened whites and sheets and pages

of this paper on which I write this elegy for them,

knowing in their emerald hearts that these were once

their happy, dancing brothers, sisters, friends?

 

With Love,

Mazie