Enemy elements

Not to everyone's taste perhaps, but at risk of sounding rhetoric, I did say eclectic.

Enemy elements

Still, the water is tranquil, flowing it soothes;
a skilled pacifier,
it calms the outer twisted charred remains, as cruel
contorted black-hot embers spit nuggets of molten heat,
kindling barks;
a loud, cracking-bark; an imperceptible scream: ‘leave this place’,
heat so ferocious and brutal that even
the structure gives up the fight,
cinders float like crusaders making their escape
trapped in an upward spiral of rising heat -
they die and float through air and land in
a grave of ash.

A grave.
an ash grave; like the colour it leaves in its wake
awkward, bitter pain as the last breath
is expelled,
exultant, the flames lick the night and bite a wound so deep
it cannot be healed.

A torrent of aqua gurgles and smothers
the captured flames,
oppressed as they are oppressor;
balance is restored,
not without casualty – memories alight in the charred remains
long after they expire,
etched as twisted metal into the vacant landscape –
poignant as the edifice that once stood proud,
all that remains is grey,
a grey grave;
like the colour it leaves in its wake.

(c) copyright Jane Edwards 2010