In The End, The Soil Burns.

• Ameli Richter, Grade 7, Cherrybrook Technology High School -
• Poetry
• 2020

Excellence Award in the 'The Inside Story 2020' competition

Moonlight silver laces trees, as evening orange slips to black.
Stars silenced by the darkness.
Smoky clouds choke the sky, like assassins in the night.
Roars and flashes bring to life, a beast of red and gold.
Ash bark peels from flame dipped trees, the perfect meal for a blazing throat.
Broken beds, rusted, creaking, too weak to hold up fear-soaked children.
Nowhere for them to lay their heads.
Hearts asleep, but eyes awake. Silently hoping it were fake.
Sisters, Mothers, Brothers, Fathers; watching their homes, burned at the stake.
Skin whipped by tongues of fire.
Devastation grips the land, but people still stand, hand in hand.
Mother Nature has her ways, and in the end, it’s kindness that pays.
Loving hearts provide steady minds, and hands mend ruins, salvaged from rubble.
For in this endless cycle,
the ashen thief always returns,
And in the end the soil burns.