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Regeneration: a poem
A poem, a poet’s note and a poetry prompt
Spiked with trees, parched hunchbacks
wait for a spark to ignite them into
monstrous beacons flaring in the night.
In the gullies, blackened gums recall
the lush licking of the flames,
curl their leaves and itch
to be rid of crawling ants and koalas,
to explode in oiled ecstasy
and send fireball birds spinning slowly through the air.
Desiccated grass sucks and chuckles
at the north wind,
dreams of grasshopper races across the plains,
trying to outrun the drenching skies
that churn ash with earth
to quicken the green explosion.
Poet’s note: I wrote this poem some years ago, after my first experience of seeing a bushfire on a hill behind the house where we lived. It was at night and was an eerie experience. The next day, everything was black, and then a few weeks later, the green growth was so…
