Ash Wednesday, 1983: A Recollection
I spent Ash Wednesday in a computer room,
unaware of the outside world until I left at five.
There was a furnace wind and smoke in the air.
The car radio told me of Lorne and South Belgrave.
"Christ", I thought, "I'd better get home quick smart."
It took an age, the road was cut by fire.
I made my way by backroads and by-ways,
joined my brigade, but too late for Cockatoo.
The next week passed in a scarlet blur.
Fourteen years on, I still get flashbacks.
Eventually, when the fires were at last beaten,
I had time to look around and count the cost.
My soul felt blackened, and my dreams were filled with red.
Life lacked substance, and seemed somehow unreal.
I got tearfully drunk one night, and could never tell my wife why.
In ways I still do not understand, it changed my life.
I felt that something had been taken from me,
that I had lost something, but I knew not what.
One morning, with the fires still a raw memory,
I drove to work along a grove of burnt, leafless trees.
But on that day, there was a mist of green about them,
tiny buds sprouting upon the charred trunks.
I stopped and walked amongst them, touching them,
and I found what I had thought lost, and I rejoiced.