Firestorm to Flood

 The stifling heat, the smokey haze,
 Sweet smell of eucalypts—
 The land down under’s summer days
 Performing to the script.
 

 On distant hills the dreaded plume
 As speeding sirens blare;
 Ever-growing grey mushroom,
 Falling cinders everywhere.
 

 Hot northerly’s force-feed the fire—
 The eucalypts explode;
 Smoke and fames rise higher, higher—
 It’s catastrophic mode.
 

 With anxious hearts and bated breath
 We watch the fire-front grow
 Expanding fast in length and breadth
 Beneath an eerie glow.
 

 Against this monster’s grim advance
 The firemen toil in vain;
 They know they do not stand a chance—
 “O Lord, we need the rain!”
 

 Down to the south and westward too
 Banks of rising cloud ascend—
 Perhaps a change is coming through—
 “O rain, you are our friend!”
 

 Then from the south a sudden burst,
 A gusty cooling squall,
 The direction of the fire’s reversed,
 Its progress quickly stalled.
 

 A fearsome flash of blinding light,
 A massive thunderclap
 As day is quickly turned to night—
 The sky’s turned on the tap!
 

 The clouds burst on the charcoaled ground
 The hissing flames are quenched,
 The long-parched land in torrents drowned
 Dramatically drenched.
 

 From raging fires to teeming skies—
 Enigma we embrace—
 The paradoxes that comprise
 This vast divergent place.
 

 

 Vincent Lyons.