An End Is Only The Start Of Something New Poem by Anne Rhitak

A tree stands here, majestic and proud,
Another nearby, drooping and old,
The trees stand alone, so far yet so close,
Spreading their leaves, searching for sun,
Pushing their roots deep underground,
All the while creating a forest
Existing both above and below.
A canopy of leaves, a tangle of roots
Grows from a wood into a forest.

Then the rain comes, bringing thunder and lightning
And raindrops fat and heavy
To pound the earth and strike the ground,
Split the heavens and shake the sky,
A mother of storms, a swirling maelstrom.
A bolt slips through the warring sky,
A shard of lightning that strikes a tree.
A flame leaps up, eager to devour
The forest, the ever-alive gathering of trees.

The rain abates, the clouds shy away
As the sun creeps over a distant horizon,
Its warm light highlighting a scene of death,
Of carnage, of skeletal remains,
The skeletons of trees, all that is left
In the tracks of the fire, hungry for power,
Hungry for life, a fire that in its hast
Devoured to greedily, and killed itself.
But from these ashes, plants come anew,
From the ashes, like a phoenix rising,
The first green shoots poke through
And in the now fertile earth, which is
Moistened by rain and seeded with ash,
The forest begins again.