I walked a road of ashes today. “Seven months ago,” memories of fires flashed back from the sticks and sand. A mountain cast red – The cathedral of destruction towered above us, blazing into the night, we feared losing our homes, at the base of those burning hills. The trees went up by the thousands. Surprised, caught aflame, the trees left a wake of ashes, that washed down the mountains in the rain, where in the riverbeds they dried, sun baked into grievous scales upon the Earth.
Grey. Like the broken wheels in a grandfather clock. Heavy. Like water in a well. Behold the River Styx where quiet trolleys run. What passes along such roads now? Dreams of an America that never existed. Ashes. The lies and illusions of modern sitcom laughtracks. Ashes. The madness of those people [you know who] driving their mad trucks, raising a mad-middle finger on the oil-slick roads of their mad, mad world. Burn their own world to ashes.
What a great time to take things seriously, to look into the destruction, and say no more to such needless suffering. Rise, phoenix from the dust storm. We have keys and know the doors – how will we escape the box? A bird of many colors turns in her shell.
And I walk through this riverbed covered in debris of those trees lost to the fire. A memorial parade for desert beings I once knew. I sense the spirit of the river there: like those of its kind, it carries on through dryness and flood-times alike. Rhythms of the land keep flowing. Tomorrow I may dine with friends under a full moon. Today, I walk a road of ashes.