(A phoenix rising from this cloud of darkness)
I know this isn’t how it works, but I persist in seeing—I choose to see—wicks of new life rising through the discouraging cold, lifting up through the wet-blanket night, like fire-hot filaments in dangerously overheated lamps, searching for a place to land and flare, to ignite new beginnings everywhere in the burnt-out past. A new tree needs the hot touch of a searing wand, a smouldering thread, jostling with incandescence—like a sizzling stamen cozing up to the plant’s anther. This crackling filament is a forest fire in reverse. It quickens the effrontery of a moribund landscape, torquing it into a new, blistering fecundity.
