Fires Of Summer

• Iris Xu, Grade 4, Linden Park Primary School
• Poetry
• 2022

Excellence Award in the 'Summertime Fun ONLINE' competition

Haze and black hangs in the air.
Orange and red dance across shrivelled weeds,
Swallowing the forest like a searing fist.
Flames run across animal hides.

Ash and debris litter the soil.
The forest is no more.
From lush and green
To a graveyard, a place of grief.

Splintered wood across the ground.
Blackened trees, no stars that night.
It's quiet, silent as a mouse
But underneath the sorrow of a thousand fallen trees...

Is a single twig and smudge of green.
Where the fires of summer leave death and misery
Is a new sapling, a new hope.
For the dawn of yet another grove to grow.