Smoke, carbon, acrid, wet, ruin.
Smell of burn carried on the night breeze
Guarded building slowly settling
Sounds of its death
So slow and creeping
As to be disjointed from the material
Cries of timbers sagging from no support.
Charred, blackened, weakened from flame
Gable ends swaying in the wind
Like hands reaching out to the unseen
Attempting to grasp the sky
Fighting to stay upright
Then silence
Dawns red creeps into the sky
Reflecting colours of life off of the clouds
As if to mock with its cause of destruction
Eventually man and machine appear
Pieces of salvage removed like ***** donations
Then the building is torn apart
Dust, noise and strain.
Truck load after truck load carried away
So much less time to remove than to build
Soon all that’s left is the foundation
The building block of what comes next.

Dan Gray
2007