Firestorm

eyes open
to an orange-tinted
charcoal sky
swirling and billowing
like sand in the ebbing tide
raining ashed embers
in a pale blanket
over the world
while red-orange tongues
whip through tinder-dry brush
popping like firecrackers
snapping as tongues consume
hillsides, fields, and neighborhoods
like slithering snakes
flicking their forked-tongues
sidewinding
over peaks, roads, and crests
like a train
roaring, rushing, pushing, plowing
everything
to move with the wind
destruction, desolation, death
in the ashes
to hope, rebuilding, community and life
in the phoenix that rises from them.