Foundations

The caldera brews a magma burden,
sulphurous burps boiling away on the wind.
I hold my breath upon crater's lip
pushing words, one at a time,
from the sharply glassed precipice
into the furnace.
Words?  No -- thought,
shot molten through pen fittings
oozing shape onto paper.

A sea of white surrounds
infant islands
cooling on the page.
Islands do not float,
but grow upward from the unseen
solid of the bottom,
roots once magma hot
now black basalt pillars
for the anchoring.
While ink flows cross the ocean,
the collective mind beneath
dissolves all knowledge of my travels
and casts words
upward in plastic mounds
to build islands, continents, worlds.

Scott Speck
08/01/99