The blistering fires of summer have passed, the sun baked escarpments rise, great fists of stone jutting from the earth charred and blackened, a monument to the wrath of the inferno’s passing.
So we slip into the stolid season of decay, the trees shed leaves and lifeblood in the howling gales, their fruit discarded or withered on the branch.
The crows quork and scream their exultations, a feast to behold before their greedy eyes. Their wings quavering in anticipation, they jostle and fidget for prime position, their quarry marked for consumption.

Down on the ground, the world turns in torpid squalor as the barren, gnarled limbs reflect a macabre mimicry of our affliction.
The core is infested, swollen and turgid with rot. Worms burst forth, their squalid squirming roiling the froth of effluvia. The frost limned hearts prefrozen against the coming chill, the sickly rays of daylight fall empty and impotent, their death each eve crumbling before the oppressive night.
The winds shift, the aptly named Diablos bring promise of dry despair, zephyrs zip through the desiccated deciduosity, moaning their banshees wail and leading to the gates of hell.

And yet…

A trickle, a faint whisper of a promise of hope. The aroma of petrichor fills the air.

A drip.

The world waits with bated breath as the grey mottled sky looms thick with clouds, pregnant with their bounty, their deliverance.

A drop.

Eyes downcast, flicker with a guttering light. To my sonderous delight, the lights begin to flicker and swell.
The deluge breaks with insistent glory, the skies weep for the dead, for the living, for us all.
The dirt and detritus washed away, the air made clean and the sins absolved, the flames of our hearts roar into a conflagration of congregation.

The only defense against the coming dark is the fire we alight in one another.
Strangers wave and wish good health, their masks muffle their words but the crinkling at the corners of their eyes cannot contain the cheer.
Screens alight with unfathomable resolutions, the customary feasts carried out by proxy as we seek shelter from the storm.
Though the land is burned and destitute, new seeds take root. Though the soil may be cracked and hardened, new buds form to burst through the ashes in glorious rebirth.
We have been pushed and tried my friends, stretched beyond our limits. There is a fire burning across the land that keeps us from our loved ones, from our jobs, our way of life. But we are not alone, this I say, you are not alone. The heartfire of the hearthfire burns ever bright, but through distrust and fear, selfishness and greed we shall perish.
Through love and respect for one another, we shall persevere. There is light before us, and a promise of a new year to come.