the lion and the forest

she, that ancient forest,
becomes consumed too easily by fire
and in her younger years
when her sapplings bent easily upon their green
and her dew covered leaves shook with the dawn
she too then was magicked far too quickly
by the iridescent beckonings of twilight
though it was in her transformative era
past the youthful glaze, and firmly in
the years of permanent change
when her dewy leaves had dried precariously
that she was ravaged by a spark that flew in
unannounced, landed, nestled in the deepest
part-- and smoldered and engulfed her core
and nothing was left save for the crumbling
towers of ashes once majestic, green, natural
statues that whispered of the mysteries of the earth
and so she, with trembling branches once again
drew up her boughs and nurtured newness,
basing her nature flesh now not on things past
but on water and fluidity, amorphous amalgamations
of the earth, her mother, because with this
constantly moving formation came rolling, ever
flowing impenetrability~
and so she became the heart of darkness
and many charters fell in obsession with her
her dark ways and her dark feel and her dark
obscurities~ but never did she let them light a
path through her undiscovered tracings--
but on a certain day when her darkness was
almost fully formed and static, shivering in its fullness
a majestic lion sauntered in, the king of beasts,
his tawny mane and glowing fire-base bursting
through her close knitted, light-lacking form
and shed blinding rays around--
she balked and bucked and rolled her leaves
and thought she had won and stoicism stayed
but when the lion left, she glanced down
and saw paw prints, glowing embers singed into her soil