Ascension Day

 

Mount Pelée in Martinique
sits on  the earth's edge.
Stratovolcano with a
steamroller agenda.

Vapor and tremors rumble hello's
then it spits a rain of cinders.
White layer of ash spewed over
farmed, then wilder beasts, poisons

rivers, horses and cattle.
Pelée's black breath
gifts ash and gas and rocks;
the island chokes in sulfur.

The crater lashes out
boiling mud, tasting the river
and the sweet sugar works,
flavored with workers' bones.

The sea inhales, gush
hiccups over Saint-Pierre
town. Ships and boats
scatter and countryfolk

flood the town, as the trees
shrivel. The mayor locks down
all exits. Mountaintop flashes,
crater sores glow... flare.

Morning sparks, the last cable
telegraph falls silent under the ascension
and descent of a pyroclastic surge,
inferno purge as Pelée vomits death.

Eight square miles and thirty thousand
souls suffer its indigestion. Bodies burn
for days, shrouded in stench and ruins.
Layered corpses are lost, their eternal rest in ash.

As it was, on May 8, 1902





Entered in the Historical Events comp