REVELATION 8:16:2020
BY DUSTIN SMITH
For everything there is a season.
That summer was a season for ash.
The world was a humid wasteland, baking
In the hot August sun. The kind of heat
That turns the air into thick molasses,
Smothering you in its sticky embrace.
A bolt of molten electricity
Split the heavens and crashed to the surface,
Shattering the day’s swollen sluggishness.
The sky struck sparks in the wool of the land
And the Lionshead leapt up in protest,
Roaring in a violent conflagration.
The first trumpet sounded like crackling brush
When two fires merged into the Santiam.
Twenty-one blazes spread over the state
As a million acres burnt to cinders.
Buildings smoldered for months; little more than
Charcoal embers of skeletal remains.
Five tranquil towns vanished; razed to the ground
Like modern day Sodoms and Gomorrahs,
Husks of homes crumbled in scorching winds like
Pillars of salt dissolving into dust.
Forty-thousand souls evacuated
With short notice, such was their Lot in life.
I sat secured behind cold concrete walls,
Captivated by this catastrophe,
Wondering if angels had sounded off
Three more brass blasts as the sky turned blood red.
It slowly darkened as the blood congealed
Until daylight was consumed by darkness.
People in prison are accustomed to
The end of the world; we lived in limbo
As we huddled in our dystopia
And watched it all burn. Fat flurries of ash
Drifted down in apocalyptic snowflakes,
Blanketing the world in remnants of ruin.
While roiling lava crawled across the sky,
Hardening into obsidian clouds,
From Portland to Almeda Drive, hollow men
Whimpered, “Is this really how the world ends?” | DS
Great imagery.