© Aislynn d’Merricksson, 2017

Shadows on the wall,
stained forevermore,
ghosts
heavy with the weight of the past.

To see, to see-
indifferent destruction
waged from afar.
People cease being real,
mere numbers on a chart,
faceless and distant.
No chance to see-
we are the same.

Flesh and blood,
hopes and dreams.
Gone in seconds,
as if never there,
or shattered in the wake
of grievous injury.
Or stolen away later by
debilitating illness.

The air hangs heavy,
thick and silent.
Oppressive.
Suffocating.
There is instinctive knowing,
an intuitive dread.
Something Wicked this way comes.

Bright flash.
Searing heat sucking
all oxygen away in greedy hunger,
vaporising all that lives in its path.

Plumed growth as a
malignant mushroom shrieks tall
and dies.

The earth trembles, settles,
leaving behind eerie quiet.
The stunned silence
of desolation.

Man should never have
the power of nature’s volcanic fury.