Tuesday, March 31, 2015

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.

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