Cool breath on scorched skin
is the lie the season tells,
as the wind arrives disobedient,
ransacking the gums,
shedding bark like prophecy,
sprinkling eucalypt confetti into
its own furious artistry
of debris and dust
from dry upon dry.

It takes hold of our tender eyes first,
grit-claiming, blinking, weeping,
then takes the trembling hills,
as orange tongues follow where
the beast has breathed,
that rumbling singer,
that tuneless hymn of stinging
air and ember,
unstoppable, unsorry, rocking its
grumbling thunder across trees and
fields that yellow and curl
and turn to grey and black.

Nothing much stands after the terror
reign of this coming and going,
only the promised life beneath,
only the wind’s fatal signature:
silence, swirling ash and the strange
cool kiss still touching our necks
while the world beyond us burns.

 

18/1/2026