2015 Poem a Day, Day Twelve

Prompt for Day Twelve:

For today’s prompt, write a damage poem. Since my baby brother is a storm chaser, my mind usually jumps straight to storm damage. However, there’s more than the physical damage created by things like hurricanes, trains, and war planes. There’s also the emotional and psychological damage we inflict, survive, and conceal. The bright side of any damage is that it can be transformed into a poem.

Fire

A child walked

through the charred waste

of a forest after a fire

She felt the heat

still trapped

within the soil,

and she wept for

the blackened roots

of the tindered trees.

Smoke curled

in wending tendrils,

stinging in her throat,

and he cried, “How

can anything

survive

such darkness?”

Yet on the ground

there lay the seeds

sprung forth from

the coils

of their cones

The rain would come

to soothe the soil

and feed the seeds

released

Tender shoots

will grow anew

and from fevered flame,

reborn

All that lay

in devastation

will see the

sun once more.