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.