A breath of fire, freewrite

From the sky it comes, phoenix-like, cleansing the earth.

No, take two. Thou shalt not take apocalyptic visions as the true God.

The oil plume reached up to the stratosphere. It burned for months, enough lost fuel to power a nation. A subterranean Grendel. Tears of Allah. What we will do for oil.

The atmosphere warmed, the glaciers calved. I cannot shake brimstone from my psyche. The algorithm of the secret and the profane. The yin and yang of polar opposites.

Only, now the polar caps are melting in winter, and the deserts are heating up. A breath of fire comes to scourge us from this earth. Hellfire. Some dream toward the stars, as if it were a solution, but would you wish to unleash ourselves upon the universe after what we’ve done to this place we call home? We are 11 seconds to midnight. A breath of fire is slowly cleansing this place, making it pure for some other life form to come.

Meanwhile, I teach the children to make art, what else is there to do with all this waiting? The slow combustion of the dinosaurs, The car I drove to get here. We madly use up what little is left, because there is no alternative.

I think of those calving ice sheets, the newly discovered fjords of Greenland, how beautiful they were from the air. Sapphire and midnight against brilliant snowfields, kissed by peach flamed sunsets.

Take 3. Purdah for the earth, born again. Kilimanjaro‘s glacier cap is melting, and will be gone within 10 years, within our lifetime. A terrible beauty indeed. Fire, white hot, snowfields of Venus, the fire within. Non-carbon lifeforms. The salamander, born in fire. The Firebird rising.

2/9/2007