The Ashtray of Australia

Black shadowy creatures, lifeless, still, hiding, deeply embedded in gumtrees.
As red-hot embers surround the sky ‘til an unexpected forceful, yet light breeze,
Sweeps through the green, everlasting landscape.
Spreading burning embers through forest plants as the birds desperately try to escape. 

Heat rises and falls, sending the black ants scurrying through the woods to far away.
Watching their home burnt to charcoal ashes.
Over hills far away from this ashtray, the flames, soaring, the wind wildly bashes.

They flee, through the blazing, roaring, hot flames.
 Trying to escape this ghastly, sad game.
The glum, petrified, animals’ lives flashing before their eyes, frozen in time.
The afterlife so near to the wildlife.
Who provoked this horrific and cruel crime?

The fight of flame, it cannot be stopped, its bright embers, they fight forever more.
Their blazing, vivid light cannot be blocked as it encompasses the charcoal forest.
It strips the evergreen forest floor.

The sun slowly shuts its sad, tired eyes.
Letting go, it finds its time to escape, disappearing into its dark disguise.
The moon rises into the vast landscape.
The forest lays, the sky, as dark as ink.
The land is quiet, dark, dead, nothing blinks.