Wide eyes like windows
to the soul
reveal the dazzling, dancing flames within.
Flames that burn
with passion and purpose,
fortitude and fearlessness.
In the heart of each individual.

Flames that, unified by a common vision
become a ravishing inferno:
Merciless, yet desperate.
Once altruistic ambitions
transformed
into a hypnotizing dance that
through their furious, fiery consumption
possessed a strange grace in
devouring.

The flames rolled outwards
spitting, licking, flickering
expanding and engulfing.
The oppressive heat confirmed
that such a fire could only have been infused
with divine fortitude.

But who was it?
God
or the Devil?

So many of them.
Only in name could they have been humans
For in reality they constituted something much larger:
A seething,
surging,
roaring
multitude of individuals who have lost all sense
of identity, time, being
or anything else beyond that which they fueled
by nothing but determination and the fervor of their hearts and souls.

A flame that would change history.

And as the copious black smoke blinded civilizations
for hundreds of miles,
Who could have expected an inglorious failure?
That the great torrential swirls of ash
Would fall to the ground like snowflakes
to lay forever embedded
in the soil of Syria and Rome?
That it would leave only the lingering smell of smoke
that still drifts through the pages of history like incense?

But after all that has happened,
though that fulgent danger has subsided,
What is there to be won only
“By love, by prayers, and by the shedding of tears”?

Just remember:
All it takes is a spark.