I'm in Sicily, climbing
Mt Etna-Shasta, the liveliest
volcano on Earth. Red-gold
dappled dancers, lava-limbed,
cavort within the summit-crater rim.
Sunk in that fumaroling brink
is a whitewashed bunker, clinging like
opal in rough matrix. Behind
that small brave face the holy caves extend.
Here above the fountains live Volcano
Monks, praying to Hephaestos and Pele.
Austere their lives, and potentially short,
though liquid flame hasn't flooded
their stony halls in centuries. For
their redoubt's a thorny crag, above
a shark-jawed caldera-gash
where lava vomits when the pool's
in spate. Etna-Shasta never cools
enough to plug, so the cauldron shan't
explode in suicidal rage. Sane,
unlike the apoplectic vain
Cascade cones back home.
A courteous forge! As well befits
the glowing god below. (I hear
they hardly ever virgins throw.)
I came to interview the most renowned
of these Volcano Monks: a gray-blue
alien bird, two meters tall.
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A star-tourist, one of our first, he came
for one day, and stayed sixteen
years. Who of us foresees the call?
We nest behind stone parapets and gaze
out on the fire-veined lake below,
and interview. "When you pray, do you
really believe a fire-god hears?"
"Well," says the big-headed dusky crane
"I really believe I'm here.
I believe the volcano's here.
I believe I pray to the volcano
god. I'm sure of that. I never ask
the god to grant wishes, or
to answer me, so I can't swear
a god is on the line.
But is that truly worship's point?
All I can do is hold up my end
of the interview, put in my time,
purify thought and word and act.
No god ever made us pure. We
groom our own feathers.
Shouldn't we? Does not Pele
have grander work to do?"
I think the interview is done.
What more is there to say?
Under the heron's indigo eye
the fire-fountains sway.
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