Kilauea Erupting

Pele’s billowing her red-orange skirts,
Breathing sulfurous fire upon her children.

Rapturous breath squirts as her nostrils flare
She spits stones skyward with a boy’s aim,

Surfs the lava, leaves her black powder ash
To fall like snow.  Rocks rise, stick like playdough

Then liquefy from black to red,  her voice
hisses and cackles as the shape-changing one

Maiden to mother to crone, back to wahine,
Smiling in the clouds that swirl, the ash columns

Holding up the brilliant blue sky, the bending bridge
Between salt and fresh, the water she causes to fall

The steam flashes white as the flow of her blood
Scalds the salt water, boils the fish, the rock quick freezing

As lava plunges into the blue abyss. I wish to see
Your hula island dance, the piled tumble turned stone

Breaching air and forming land. Our mother of fire
Pelehonuamea—“She who shapes the sacred land”—

Cries crystal green tears, throws off golden skeins
Of stone hair, like some crazed Rumpelstiltskin

Her children mutely watch as her red and black rage
Cascades across her previous creation. What can we do

To quench your fire? How can we settle your destructive desire?
Build it up and tear it down again— torch palms waving

In the salt kissed breeze. Pele, Pele, Pele—Please?

Jo Schaper lives in Pacific, MO, and is a lifelong Missouri poet. Now semi-retired from a career in printing and publishing, she is the production half of Paw Paw Poets Publishing. Her interests include geology, wild caving, environmental causes, and following her writing vision wherever it leads her.