Burnt

Drawn to something familiar here

In this burnt out burnt down burnt through place:

Rock keeps its cool, its hard meltdown space

Wherein equally cold and heat appear

Ribbed like sunsets or smooth young night sky.

And here creatures four-limbed two-eyed died

Or alive yet head on to a safe side,

Human-shaped some of them walking like why.

Something familiar on oblong screen

Away where stingy light breaks dingy smoke

In city certainty still talking green:

Water, first specks flecks then torrents then floods

White out hail white white right through creeks broke

At impressionable speeds where white floats.

Photograph: detail of a b&w work by Keith Haring currently in the safety of the NGV.