Blackened Earth

I smelled it before

I reached it, the

Unmistakable taste

In the back of the

Throat of heartache

Grey corrugated iron

Slumped in exhausted heaps

Chimnies rising out of the ash

And black bare tree trunks

Starkly naked sentinel

Over the scene of

Destruction.

A black patch still betraying its recency

Heat cooling off in crackles and

Shocked bark flaking to the earth.

I'm cast back to a time

Remembered and yet long forgotten.