Burning Mountain Poem by Lillian Susan Thomas

Burning Mountain

Rating: 3.3


I am compelled to write about Mount St. Helens
Even though I sit here in Texas, in the fever of clear blue air,
Too far away to know how. I cannot write about her fitful sleep,
Restless with nightmares whose boundaries novaed,
Dropping down upon her residents with the roar of tearing earth;
How it must feel to wade into volcanic smog too thick to breathe:
Everyone masked like aliens in a foreign atmosphere;
How geologists fly over and awe at her throbbing red heart as it emerges.
(They have been praying secretly to her slow-rising lava dome.)

I do not know these things on my skin, on my eyelids, fingertips.
My tongue has not scorched dry from the constant taste of ash.
I do not know what it is like to use firmly planted feet upon the ground
As an extension of the ears - those tiny percussion bones tuned too high
For the deep rumble of earth.

But I know, I feel certain in the pulse of images
I have received from the wires, the radio waves of news:
Up there on the mountain, a poet
Bruised by the crush of rock cascades,
Suffocating in the noxious air,
Sprinting in erratic panic through the burning-bush maze,
Perhaps cramped with other survivors in temporary shelters,
Finds scraps of paper to write his poems on.

And if he does not make it to safety,
Well, this is just to ask all those who search for bodies up there,
Whether it be months from now when all the ash
Is rained out of the clouds, and quakes have ceased,
And you find some half-rotted remains cemented in mudflow -
Check the pockets. Please, check the pockets..

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Lillian Thomas 15 May 2009

This was written in 1980 after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, and is dedicated to all poets caught in the jaws of disasters both natural and man-made.

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Ashraful Musaddeq 25 May 2009

Beautiful. Love the last stanza most. 10++

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Shashendra Amalshan 22 May 2009

Yes, you’ve said ma'am this is dedicated to poets who died in Mount St. Helens...but if we look at broadly. this has a very universal value..the world has crumbled in to a very pathetic state....we really don't know how many people die, how many writers or poets die before they expressed themselves...In fact the artists who live in those pathetic war torn places have lot to share with the world...but most times they die very young...or even if they search their pockets and find the works they v done, very rarely those works are shown to the world...you v expressed it very well indeed......nice one 10++

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Dr.subhendu Kar 17 May 2009

I do not know these things on my skin, on my eyelids, fingertips. My tongue has not scorched dry from the constant taste of ash.....................wonderful exposition of stance as when smitten.................with gallantry of imagery, yet ingenious by grace, well penned,10+, thanks for sharing

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Ashraful Musaddeq 16 May 2009

Wonderful composition, love it with 10.

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Paul Hansford 15 May 2009

'I cannot write...', 'I do not know...' but you do write, and you do tell us most eloquently of the unknown horrors, but the thought that some unknown poet might have described them all at first hand makes a telling ending.

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