There comes a hush after the burning—
when the air is thick with endings,
and the earth is draped in a garment of gray.
What once was radiant has been unmade,
what once bore form has yielded to dust,
and all seems given over to silence.

Yet even here, in the stillness of surrender,
the hidden labor of renewal begins its quiet work.

Beneath the soot, the roots endure;
within the ashes, seeds are cradled,
kept in waiting until the breath of dawn descends.

And slowly—soft as a whisper finding its voice—
life exhales again.
A tender green presses upward through the ruin,
a flame rekindled not from what was lost,
but from the promise of what is to come.

Such is the quiet and hallowed mystery of renewal:
that even after fire has claimed its hour,
and silence has gathered all that was bright,
the ashes themselves begin to breathe,
and from their breath is born
the first light of a tomorrow
both tender and eternal.

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*In remembrance of the lives lost in the Kerrville floods, may their light endure in memory, and may those who mourn be upheld by the hope that even in sorrow, renewal will come.