In the vaulted canopy, songs of love

ring triumphantly as autumn is

full upon us.  Heavy boughs of great

emerald growth declare the crowning beauty

of many fruitful decades without fire

to spoil comfort or prune what may

 

be needed.  Yet in the changing seasons, one may

observe displays of the Creator’s love.

Angry lightening strikes the towering structures and fire

engulfs our understory.  To denizens there is

no mercy for young or old, all beauty

is on a perilous flight from this great

 

destruction.  Amidst the terror the great

giants topple, although embers, dust and flame may

still lash out to destroy unseen beauty.

Ferns and moss, lichens and all those who love

these shaded groves find the revealing heat is

too intense and wither in the face of fire.

 

The high and storied boughs curse the purging fire

for they are taken from lofty places and reduced to ash.  Great-

ness, all consumed, lies in heaps on the forest floor and is

once again nothing more than dirt:  basic elements which may

serve mankind when combined together in their purity and renewed with love

by the coming cold, harsh winter.  Beckoned by a longing for beauty,

 

the cleansing storms of spring are penetrating and beauty

can be felt in the warm breezes that once fanned the blazing fire

but now bring bended knees to the soil to work humility and love.

Seed-filled pods and cones, having fallen earthward like great

scales, now open and release what finally may

prove for the forest a restoration as pure sunlight is

 

again reaching long obscured ground where dormant power is.

Now begins a new song of love.  Natural beauty

unites sun, rain and soil that they may

test the worth of the seed.  After the trial of fire

the faithful seedling pushes upward against great

odds to restore another generation of love.

 

Love is a great and beautiful fire.

When who we are is challenged, adversity may,

if we allow it, reveal God’s love and His works of beauty.