Volcanic Heart

Volcanic Heart
By Patricia Meyer

For years I stood at this heavy base,
Daring steaming lava to rush down,
To cauterize my grieving veins,
To wash over and blind me in a bath of stone kisses.

As flash fire singed my humanity,
I longed for and feared the next wild release
a forceful, gut wrenching sinful purge –
Then grief and remorse, as cool ashes fell onto my bed like a virgin’s tears

I stand again at the base of my volcanic heart.

Terror rips in, thrashing wild in my chest, pounding and screaming,
“How can you know,” a thousand times,

A chanting echo across a chasm of fear, you’ve been here before “You didn’t know, know, know……….”

And I fear the unpredictability of volcanic release, What the next puff of smoke might carry down. And in the distance I hear the rumbling echoes of my life, And I see a lonely smoke strand snaking from my lips. Calling for my spirit to be fed, and fired.

Then a distant hiss, “Beware, beware, stand back!
Who will explode? Who will fall from the sky - a million shards of glass?

Who will snake after whom like molten lava
pulling them down, sucking them under, boiling them alive?

My chest churns, run fast away from the rumbling,
From the molten passion, it will catch you,
Sear your soul into the earth, claim you forever as it own.

Yet I turn back, entranced,
watching for, listening for, the clouds to clear and the rumblings to sleep,

To traverse the mouth, drop into the belly,
to breathe the fiery ashes of your love into my breast.

I stand at the mercy of my volcanic heart
And shudder excitedly, as the fiery flakes of your passion fall sizzling into my soul,

Sometimes blistering my veins with doubt,
Sometimes kindling my devoted core.