Fire Storm

The painting above was done by Marian Therese Rennie who lived (and lives) in Acheron, Victoria, Australia,near the epicenter of a group of 400 fires that in early 2009 killed 173 people, injured 414, destroyed 3,500 structures, incinerated 11,000 head of stock, burned 1.1 million acres of land and released the energy equivalent of 1,500 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

Her painting inspired the following poem....

Flaming up
the searing surf rolls through
To plunge and rise again
In arching pain
Which hiss and crackles
Roars in raging thirst
Drinks and sucks the life it burns
Flays flesh to naked ash
As living trees writhe and crash
Crisped to blackened wisps
That rise in glowing spumes
Of shimmering wind and fumes
Borne streaming, screaming, howling
To the starless night
above the superheated storm.