Today I spoke to the volcano
about fear, and clean air,
about fertile dust that contains
the lust for life but not the rain
that will set that lust alight.
I spoke about future years,
about life and death
and days yet to come,
about the moon and blinding sun,
geckos and african squirrels
and the fear of high places.
I shouted my greeting to the volcano
and he answered me in the voice of
my son, my daughter, my wife,
my mother, my father, myself,
the voices of dead generations
and generations unborn.
I enquired about lizards
and the hazards, of desert travel,
about desicated crowns of thorns
and electric cars, falling mountains
and shooting stars.
I asked him about dhows and goats
and camel routes. Spice markets,
slave markets and Spanish pirates.
He spoke in a whisper of deep sea
and cold places, mountain faces
and races to the top. He whispered
of heat and aching and breaking
through,
spewing life above the cold water.
He whispered of building,
filling the ocean with his spirit,
of lava and magma.
He whispered about continental shelves,
of shifting and uplifting
and finally of great heat
and four thousand years of sleep.
Today I spoke to the volcano
about life, and about death
and about things to happen yet
and he whispered his answer
from deep within the earth.
© Dave Kavanagh 2016
Poet's Corner 