Poem: Lava Flow (2012)

Lava Flow

Myriad shades of black

Ramble under a magic-marker sapphire sky

With delusions of motion,

Like the false current

Of a flash-frozen river.

Rolling hellish mounds

Of rippling charcoal seem to stream

Beneath the blue.

Don’t believe the prehistoric vastness

Of this brittle wasteland,

The dinosaur roar

Of ocean waves

Breaking beyond the horizon.

A mere twenty years ago,

This was palm trees and fruit blossoms and sandy island coast.

All that summer-vacation lushness

Was consumed

By the liquid fury

Crawling down from the mountain

Where the god glows at night.

It oozed, cooled, and crystallized

Into ossified sable,

Burying everything the landscape knew.

Follow the twisting red-sand path

Over the fractured, flowing expanse,

Seeking the solid places

Where the earth won’t fissure

Under your feet.

Follow the crashing

Of glass water cracking,

Pummeling the newly ancient ground

And grinding the god’s rage

Into sand once more.

There, an infant beach –

Fine as flour,

Darker than soot –

Lays on the bones

Of the once-was shore.

It hugs the sun while it can,

Knowing that, one day,

Fresh orange ire will tumble again,

And a dusky new barrenness

Will swallow it whole.