The firestorm that swept a swath
of Mount St. Helens clean
left nothing alive. Nothing.
Nothing but a pumice field,
lifeless and dry as old bones,
devoid of any sustenance.
Within a year, though, within
a year, life had begun again,
insects blew in on the wind
and died and left phosphorus
enough for a vagrant lupine
to take in, and root, and live,
giving more nitrogen than it took,
beginning to create a soil
for other plants and for itself,
and food for more insects.
And so it goes, as Vonnegut observed:
In the midst of life, we are in death,
and in the midst of death we live.
A tough business, life.
Tougher, it seems, than anything.
