Krakatoa (idea)

Krakatoa

“I am the mud that will become air,
dust on the wind, black clouds of my ash.
I ask only that you listen to the earth.
Keep your ear to the ground, humbled,
or it may rise, hot, beneath your boots.”

Krakatoa shocked the sea.
Her waves crashed on distant shores.
The roar of desolation began:
bodies buried beneath the tide,
limbs, branches, caught in the sand.

She blocked the light from the crops.
The black. carbon, rain poisoned the soil.
The corn fields grew short and brown,
life waited for the sun to crack the clouds:
the draught could not last forever, yet.

So, sun came and warmed the seeds
they woke from sleep and burst their pods,
emerged from tight-lipped buds,
weaved their fresh, white, roots into the dirt,
in the shadow of the summit.

It’s not the end. One day, someday,
when a greater mountain shatters,
we will not see the stars again,
under that formless sky,
the last child will be born.

But he is not born yet.