The trunks of the trees
have grown straight and tall,
shadows fall only where
it’s logical.  The trees burned

hot, burned cold, burned like
frost, burned with frost-burn.
The fiery ice of passion let
the trees remain, unconsumed.

Fire colored the rest of the mountain:
Yellow, brown, (a darker brown
than the dirt by the path).  Fire
has melted the path-bed—

but not the path—so that the path
is higher than its bed and crowned
to allow drainage in the age that
will follow, when trees—like men—

like Moses will remove their shoes
at the sight of a burning bush.
The sun must have been low this
time of year, this time of day,

which leaves my mind confused.
Confused in those shadows.  Perhaps,
the sun was setting, vanishing,
for in the upper portion

of the upper left-hand quadrant,
the sky is nearly black.  The ice
on the shadowed cliff—
below the path—was blue.

A person walked on the path,
a building off to its right.   A part
of the mountain was covered with ice.
And what else happens in a fantasy:

The age of ice the age of fire
in a time before the parting
of physical laws.

inspired by Miki’s painting, “Fire and Ice“