This piece has just been published in the ‘Heat’ anthology published by Bar Bar Press. https://a.co/d/bzu8z5X

Three billion vertebrates, including dozens of people, perished in Australia’s ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of 2020. To add to the sense of being forsaken by God, in the middle of that devastation, Corona came to ice the bitterest cake of all.

The Fourth Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death,

astride his pale green horse,

rode over the hill

bringing Hades with him,

and leaving the ashes of trees and dwellings

in the mouths of dreamers and grafters.

The storm has put out the bushfire but the smell of burnt gumtrees and livestock still hangs in the air. At the relief centre, ash-grey ghost faces atop automaton bodies, straggle in to be recorded as being worthy of pity. Fresh-faced city social workers wait in vain for custom in their caravan with a sign offering ‘COUNSELLING’.

Under a marquee near the community hall, an exhausted fire crew shelter from the steady rain, as 44-gallon drum braziers sizzle on the perimeter. The experienced hands are watching for worrying signs amongst those whose properties have been devastated; too much grog, not enough water, too much toughness, not enough despair.

Several pairs of eyes are on a young farmer who’s lost everything, apart from his family. He’s just returned from shooting his maimed next year’s income, strewn in their singed wool coats and burnt feet across his smoldering land. His eyes are seemingly alert but glazed, his left leg is twitching and he has a tic under his right eye.

The strong go on being strong

but the frail begin to unravel

when the very earth beneath their feet betrays them.

The peat beneath the topsoil remains alight

and as, one by one, the wooden fence posts fall,

the strugglers also start to burn from the feet up.

The rains come, the donations come, the volunteers come but the money to rebuild remains in the charred distance, dependent on the devastated counting and re-counting their losses. Again and again and again, they relive Armageddon on government forms.