© 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.
And later
debilitating illness.

The air hangs heavy,
thick and silent.
Oppressive,
suffocating
There is instinctive knowing,
an intuitive dread.
Something Wicked 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 the eerie quiet
the stunned silence
of the fallen battlefield.

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