Above+the+Flames

Above the Flames

Jakarta flames & flashes up at us. I imagine angry faces turned south behind a cloak of blackness. We pass overhead  indifferently,  leaving crystals of ice to fall in our wake. I flush hard and smell a fresh orchard. To the north the gods tear great rents in the ebony shawl. Flashes of lightning turning night to day. Behind to the south the people burn. Another generation of Diggers sweat in their greens. They think of home, as they lie still and wet, listening to the crawling night. I touch your pictures as we flash into the northern hemisphere at 15 kilometres a minute, and thank God and generations of ANZACS that we are free... and you are all safe within Tuscan coloured walls and steel fences of wheat.

Peter Hughes