In the Time of Fires

The three Furies never kept me guessing;
The seasons, whither, when or why.  
Every year, the protocols of dressing:  
Always the same place, the same time.  
  
The almanac predictions you’d swear by,  
The ice age that nobody felt.  
We knew the sun had gone cold in the sky,  
Then one day things started to melt.  
   
And although the seas rose ever higher,  
The floods and the runoffs, but worse.  
One day came an ominous town cryer  
Who speaks of a harbinger thirst.  
   
To write the unspoken is biblical,  
For it’s all scribed in the past tense.  
Return of the plagues started long ago;  
I’ve no words to say in defense.  
   
The three Furies never kept me guessing;  
The seasons, whither, when or why.  
Nothing compares to betrayal’s blessing  
When faced with white ash from on high.  
   
The time of fires, the time of widows,  
Brings first responders to their knees.  
A host of arches of stained glass windows  
That once was a forest of trees.  
   
Comes a relay of planes with their airdrops,  
This time it’s the difference they make.  
Hardly seen as they look for the hotspots,  
Consumes everything in their wake.  
   
In the distant red smoke-filled horizon,  
The empty frames on empty sites.  
A bright flare up, they seem on an island;  
It looks like will be a long night.  
   
The time of fires, the time of ruin  
That now has a life unending.  
Of an ember that sparks as it blew in
From another pyre ascending.  
 
 
 
 
#ArthurRimbaud