Best-of-All Lookouts, Springbrook

The reckless rage of titans strikes and rends the Earth asunder

And from its maw a vicious a cloud of fumes and heated sulphur.

The scar a blackened sheen and up above it acid clouds,

Persisting down through epochs. What remains is poisoned ground.

Yet epochs are an instant for the patience of the stone.

So slowly but distinctly life returned and things have grown.

Rain and wind are sculptors’ tools to soften jagged edges,

And careful hands to clean away what poisons can’t be mended.

The maw became a blunted rictus gaping at the sky,

Its open ground’s invaded by the seeds which start to pry,

To pull and turn the waiting earth and nestle in it deep,

‘Fore rising up to mask the scars a titan’s rage can leave.

Destruction turns to beauty as a thousand ages pass,

‘Til blue skies frame a lookout’s view atop a national park.

Does Nature know the scenes it crafts from cataclysmic strain?

A painting for our species for this moment that we reign.