Burn Area.
Take quiet, reverent steps
through the charred steeple spires
and listen to the roaring echo
of an event so fierce
and nightmarishly tragic
that we must soothe ourselves, saying,
"Everything in its own time," and
"This ecosystem needs fire to grow."
But systems are merely products
of their conditions,
and nothing needs lightning.
Life doesn't thrive on tragedy -
It exists in spite of it.
Just as we are not born in space
and yet we hurtle through it,
So too does bright fireweed spring
between these spindly, blackened corpses.