My contribution to the Rise from the Ashes Event

Words fall short to describe the painful compassion that fills my heart, and the loss that somehow feels as if nearly my own. The Australian bushfires and their devastation are surreal.

To all of our Mixters down under, I’m sending healing love your way. May you find moments of comfort in these difficult times.

I’m a Phoenix
by Madam Snowflake

Fire burns and destroys
Heat and smoke make death
If fire is meant to purify
Why does this heart wail and cry
I don’t feel purified, only bereft

In this fire I’m grasping for breath
Choking in a haze of disbelief
Life was just here
Now the forest is cleared
What I held dear is survived only by grief

Fire is essential in the cycles
Of the universe and on this earthly sphere
But fire is brutal for living things
And from it comes far too much suffering
And recovering, takes years upon years upon years

Now a fire, calescent with anger rages
And Ignites as flames in my own chest
This conflagration sounds its warning
This fury begs for my transforming
Of the warming I need to accept

Then time melts opening a window so I remember a stake
And a fire climbing my legs, devouring my feet
From those ashes I am still rising
A Phoenix evolving, reprising
And this returning repeats and repeats until I am fully complete