Haiku - Prairie Fire

Scents of airborne ash
on the prairie winds, usher
in resurgent life.

~~~

I wrote this during class last night. We sweep ourselves up in the conversation of, theory about, plans for, and history concerning environmentalism and justice. Rom really took it away near the end of class with a description of regenerative cycles activism and community-building. What I inevitably returned to was the image of prairie fire. Prairie fire has been a somewhat affectionate term for Midwest populism in the past, which has its own contemporary counterparts these days, and has a fantastic sense of regrowth and beauty. The prairie fire sweeps out the grasses, but they are firmly rooted and many have seeds that require the fire to germinate. In a way, this is also in response to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine because the fire seems to function as an initial catastrophe, clearing the land for cultivation or development. What the fire actually does, though, is allow for the space needed by the nascent growth to rise up out of the recovered soil. The life is not new or immature, it is resurgent and comes out of the dirt because its acclimation to the biome, fortitude, and particular character.