Krakatoa

Krakatoa explodes
sacrificing Rakata and her children
on the Altar of Fire.
A black cinder cone pulverizes
to ash boiling up the steamed 
mushroom stem and into the cap,
flattening, spreading through the stratosphere.
Winds diffuse the ash and steam,
brooming dust into bands
that gird Earth in penumbra.

Summer's ash falls as winter's snow,
flakes of lavender, heliotrope, purple
blanket London streets.
Black coats, capes, umbrellas flow
down sidewalks banked
with the ashen snow of volcanoes.

Boys pack snowballs shot
through with Vulcan's breath,
smacking windows bright with color.
The stained snow melts,
trickles through the iron grate
into streams, the Thames, the Atlantic.
Down the cold black currents,
through an abyss alive
with the slow descent of corpses.
Dust alights on the bottom,
layer upon layer pressed
hot into mud, then rock.

In a million years,
the mantle picks through
the crust's crumbling ceiling,
consuming brimstone
again in the cauldron.

Scott Speck
08/01/99