elizabethlevett

This sky

with you there and me here

is the same one as when

the Neanderthal played

with fire

as we did and still do.

Were there sometimes clouds

and were there sometimes

birds

before Pompeii blew its top

and I blew mine

over things it could no longer

hold

like did and still do?

How long the pressure,

how long the steam?

Into the air, into the sky, I

breathed a song and then I

shot an arrow

and let it go.

So many mountains to move.

Mauna Loa, Vesuvius, Krakatoa,

under this same sky

into the ether

blowing their tops, letting it go.

(Image cite: Vesuvius in eruption, October 1822. George Poulett Scrope, Considerations on Volcanoes, 1864) From: Pyle, D. M., (2017) “Visions of Volcanoes”, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 25. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.790)