Sky's On Fire Poem by Mary Champion

Approaching sunset
she approached her destination.

She had never wanted to return
to the drab squalor of her youth,
but the ties of kinship had strangled her freedom
drawing her mercilessly back.

Anticipating the grey stone misery of her birthplace
she drove around the final bend
to be confronted by a radiant sunset
that gilded the dismal prospect
with a rose-tinted haze
and transformed the smog into clouds of counterfeit glory.