Bushfire

Shirtless he came gently down
To where the furthest boundary
Met the fire-ground, then crouched
To hold the still warm, floating
Knuckle-dry earth,
And poke the entrails
Of a bike.
There he found
The ghost-shadow of a tyre,
And shards of fencing
Laid like funeral bones
In smashed patterns
About an endless pyre.
The air, a fluffy screen of ash,
Seemed like incense to the
The puncturing screams ,
A rising sense that something lived
Still in the shattered space,
Something between
A life and a death.

It came on fast they said,
Roared like hell’s own train unfurled,
No time for thought, or breath
Just ignition and the foot flat down,
The giant heat and race to
Be somewhere unburning.
So on returning, there was a
Kind of second death, an
Untrod alien land, seeming,
Making unbelief much easier
Than believing.