Flames in the Forest

In painful embrace
the firestorm visited a
camouflage of leafy branches

changed trees to blackened sticks

and sun a voyeur above its
perishing landscape

coniferous shadows no longer
protected enclaves for
wildlife nor hideaways
for cautious deer
but charcoal toothpicks
in never ending ranks left and
right on this continuous road
a D. H. Lawrence’s wasteland.

Its claw-back fury reached
up consuming a heli and
three passengers

disappearing along
with carcasses
of deer mice and fowl among
10,000 acres of scorched
soil in Trafalgar Nova Scotia.

© Richard L. Provencher

Published Feb. 2010
Folly Magazine
ISSN 2152-9132