colurs

 

Colours of the wind

a poem dedicated to a koala who walked into fire*

Image credits: suzenelson_suze from BoredPanda 

If you can’t see the colours of the wind, 

you don’t know how to paint with them, 

there are things that you don’t know. 

You weren’t born in the sun burnt country,

there are things you’ll never never know!

You haven’t felt the orange glimmer of the summer wind

sweltering with the dusky smell 

of the charred tree that was your home,

the leaves oozing ashes that gave you succour

and the path, a mirage of liquid gold,

that led to the water hole.

There are thing you didn’t know,

and you’ll never never know

until you walk the footsteps of those who walked

into the blazing glow!

What are the colours of the wind,

you will never never know!

A kangaroo bounds across a road in Gippsland as it tries to escape a bushfire. — ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

*In the 2019–2020 summer called Black summer, thousands of native animals perished in bushfires in Australia, their home becoming a trap, as the bush was burning and those who lived in the bush had no where to go.

It has been estimated that more than one billion animals nationally were killed in the bushfires.

The title and the rhythm inspired by “Colors of the Wind” Pocahontas movie song

But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew

Also a comment I made on Umme Salma’s beautiful piece A Beautiful Inspiring Story of A Sweat-Drenched Happy Soul , about ‘walking in the footsteps of a stranger’, became an objective corelative, a bridge between the colours of the wind and animals running away and into the bushfire.