My Lucid Reality

The smell of soot and ash filled the air, burning my nose; causing it to wrinkle backwards involuntarily, black coated everything, each step leaving marks of brown over the tortured ground.  I coughed and looked around.  The forest was gone, the green grass, the legendary evergreens, now smoldering piles hunkering against the earth, wrecked and crying as the once babbling brook tearfully carved a new path over the landscape.

I couldn’t help but cry as I looked at the world with the eyes of the past, ‘everything changes’, the voice in my head whispered reverently, involuntarily I kicked a mound of ash that blew into the air, a cloud of black that hung suspended in time as I walked forward, then the ashes fell all around me.  My once nice pants tattered, blackened, torn, and singed at the edges, my shirt was even more of a spectacle, once a sky blue, now a black mess with burned sleeves that had been carelessly rolled back, soot marked my face.

The once great forest was gone, the cursed landscape a tribute, for as desolate and hopeless as it looked now, it was just as filled with life and vibrant before the flames.  A breeze blew soot over me, I felt it blow over me, my hand covering my eyes, feeling the dry heat, smelling the acrid air… time blew past me, the sun falling from the sky in awkward haste as I continued to step forward, the moon rising just as swiftly, falling, chased by the sun the two forbidden lovers avoiding each other as one would fall while the other rises; clouds darkened the horizon, and time slowed down for a moment, rain washed over me, the thick black ebbing down from my hair, lining my hands and face, the rain came harder, the distant wounded cry of the stream cried out, and in vengeance roared as it tore a new path, a stronger, deeper route, no longer content to be a simple stream, a raging river cut into the earth, the black didn’t disappear, but the dirt pulled at it, ate at it, consumed it with a vapid longing for something more, the earth cried through the wet; it’s whisper a crackle of exhaustion.

The sun rose, but it didn’t light the sky, the smell though was that of dawn, the soot no longer the most powerful smell, rain still trickled from the sky, mother nature not willing to give the last time to rest just yet, it poured, for weeks the rains came, the mud flowed, I sat on a rock and watched time battle around me, and then it happened.  The rain slowed, a ray of light burst through the cloud, it’s path from the heavens a pillar of light, guiding color back to this place through the light sprinkle; I stepped forward, my eyes fixed to that spot of earth where from under the char, an echo to the sun peaked forth, a green sprout reached forth, with a breath it rose, stretched, and called it’s family to burst forth.

Green returned, the cycle turned, from ashes the forest was reborn.

 — -

I have been thinking a lot about changes, and the image that really did it for me was that of green life breaking forth after a fire.

What images do you associate with change?