Mackenzie Warwick
I was crowned in spring with budding bone,
With antlers carved from dawn.
The forest was a breathing hall
I moved like rumor on.
Moss stitched the earth beneath my hooves.
Light learned my name in leaves.
The river rang like silver bells
Struck soft by passing breeze.
The spirit danced the green awake,
A glow of sap and air.
Where it stepped, the soil stirred.
Life lifted everywhere.
We drank from shade and stood in sun.
The world was wide and kind.
No hunger sharpened tooth or claw.
No ending crossed the mind.
Then thunder grew without a storm.
The ground began to groan.
The sky went sallow, sick with smoke.
The heat cut through my bone.
Ash fell thick as counterfeit snow,
A suffocating shroud.
The trees bowed black, their branches burned,
Their prayers erased, unbowed.
The spirit screamed without a sound
And spun its grief to flame.
It raged against the riven land
And could not stay the same.
The mountain split its molten mouth.
The sun was swallowed whole.
Fire marched with iron feet
And took the forest’s soul.
I ran until the running failed,
Until the world was red.
My antlers caught the burning air.
The living fled. The living fled.
When silence came, it came too late.
The ground lay stripped and bare.
The world was charcoal, cracked and still.
No wing. No root. No prayer.
Time crawled. The heat withdrew its hand.
Stone cooled. The dark remained.
I stood amid the ashen ribs
Of everything I’d named.
Then rain arrived like whispered truth.
Not loud. Not fast. Not bold.
It kissed the dust. It softened scars.
It taught the ash to hold.
Green rose in fragile, fearless threads.
Small shoots defied the grave.
The soil learned to breathe again.
The earth remembered brave.
The spirit came, no longer bright,
But patient, worn, and wise.
It laid the forest back in place
With trembling, tender ties.
I bent my head to newborn grass.
It tasted sharp and sweet.
The world was changed, but living still,
Alive beneath my feet.
I lifted bone toward open sky.
The sun returned, reborn.
I stood where death had scorched the land
And wore the coming morn.