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Pompeii's Winter

Sounds of my frantic sandal'd footsteps
on the flat-stone and gravel road with
each lunge of my linen-clad body,
in agony from efforts and gasps.
 
This citizen's grown fat from the wine;
a bottle a day, respectably,
and out of shape for this sort of clime.
My slave's in Herculaneum by now.
 
The fumes are sucked deep into my lungs,
(an artisan's bellows of his craft,
who's hands shaped clay for the kiln's fire)
as sky blackens day in its nightmare.
 
While those of us who still can, jostle
like jockeys, racing closer towards the
horseshoe bay's shoreline where boats await.
 
While overhead, the solemn silent
silt of ash floating down, white as snow.
 
Images of all I've known become
smothered into just what I know now.
 
Activities of a day ago
are greying over with blizzard ash:
 
My world of frescos & friezes and
tiles in mosaics of elegant
seascapes & landscapes, erotica,
of naked couples in their orgies.
 
Pultritude, and bacchanalia,
and of gods & goddesses whose stance,
statuesque, encircle the gardens'
flicker from sun & moonlit reflections.
 
And what of all these of our Pompeii?
Of baths, and brothels, and markets with
bounty from fertile fields and the sea?
 
I dare not look over my shoulder
or slow my need to escape by one
moment's hesitation if only
to take in through my dilated panic
 
a scene of the behemoth belching
its geysers, and sulfur-reeking lava
streams glowing from their hellish furnace.
 
Yet I take it all in despite my
denial to believe any of it!
 
The roar and rumble, the quaking earth,
the cacophony of men, and women,
many with babes in arms; their piercing
screams, shouts and oath-hurled trajectories.
 
And then they - I - ALL of us arrive,
tumbling down to the sea that pushes us
back with its broken waves even as
ash rains down in its relentless winter.
 
It makes no sound!
It muffles our arm-extended prayers.
 
I follow others who turn from the
shore and run to the warehouses that
haven't yet begun to smolder.
 
Haven from the ash as we huddle
for hours among the sealed clay amphora
filled with last year's harvest of wine's lust.
I startle in the realization:
 
The vineyards!  By the gods!
Now all is truly lost O Bacchus!

 
 
This was written for and is entered in the DUP competition "Beneath the Ashes".
Written by Jade-Pandora (jade tiger)
Published | Edited 30th Nov 2016
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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