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PAUL HERTELENDY Poet Laureat of www.thecolumnists.com |
 MOTHER NATURE: BLAST IT! |
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Special to TheColumnists.com |
Majestic
stood the grand volcano,
Too long lifeless,
With its deep snow mantle to suggest
Its underworldly heat was gone for good.
But destiny proved otherwise.
Pregnant with a mammoth baby sired by Lucifer,
The peak began to swell, and swell,
With unplumbed fiery forces bursting deep within the womb.
One
day inevitably, suddenly,
The mountain literally, liberally
Exploded,
Spewing red-hot innards of placenta everywhere,
Sending out a blast-wave splint’ring into toothpicks
All the mighty trees so many miles away,
Annihilating wildlife, even pulverizing
All the humans irresistibly, foolishly
Remaining here to watch and wait.
With
lightning speed the nation’s biggest avalanche
Then scoured clean-pristine all vales and ridges,
To remind that, far beneath,
A Pele or a Pluto still can orchestrate the main events above.
The smoke that belched for weeks thereafter
Blew to far-off towns in clouds as black as consciences
While devastating ash piled high, Pompeii-like,
Higher than the tallest treetops of before.
The pumice powder blanketed the lakes and valleys
Till the surging rivers even, choked with dust,
Were elevated far above their beds of old.
The ruthless inundations ran downstream
And powered battering rams of logs that smashed
The sturdy roadway bridges crucial to rescuers courageous
Searching for cadavers or survivors.
The
wizened mountain sage I meet upon a barren trail insists,
It had to happen. This high-altitude inferno was inevitable.
A generation later, smoke has cleared.
Volcano’s remnant shell stands dormant in its battle gray.
The headless mountain now is mostly crater.
One-time forest lands remain a moonscape
Marked by massive cliff-scarred yellow canyons
Lacking stubble grass or stubby tree,
Just a stream or two that carves its way
So gingerly through barren clay,
Still sending messages to far-off oceans:
Look, behold volcanic ire---Beware!!
Nature
left her calling card of trackless desolation.
The mountain sage insists, she’s sending trenchant signals:
We must stop despoiling Earth,
This beauty-world, or else next time she’ll wreak
Her punishment a thousand-fold.
---Mt. St. Helens, Washington
© 2002 by Paul Hertelendy.
The other illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
| Paul Hertelendy, a frequent contributor to this website, was named poet laurate by the Smithsonian Institution National Board. He lives in Piedmont, Calif., and operates an arts web site, artssf.com. This new verse is from his forthcoming collection of verse, his fourth volume to date. |
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