Poems of 1992: Lava

In honor of December 2022

I have a lot of writing to do in the 27 remaining days of December 2022. Starting this newsletter of memoir helped me see clearly how pivotal the year of 1992 was, an anchor for the threads of my story.

With a bit of focus, I could capture 1992 before the end of this calendar year.

However this Sunday finds me in an oceanfront condo on the south shore of Kauai giving myself 24 hours of recovery from a week where various objectives, objectives whose essence makes sense in the context of this memoir, yes, objectives came to fruition, opening doorways for conversations and initiatives to continue to fruit.

Instead of prose, on days like this I offer poetry.

I adore poetry, always have multiple books of other poetsʻ poems on my nightstand. But I rarely write it. The only time in my life poetry poured out of me was 1992.

This is the first in a series of poems written as I processed the break up of the intense transitional relationship that carried me forward at the (mutually agreed) end of my first marriage. No one has ever read these poems before. It is a scary and nearly paralyzing feeling of vulnerability to put these out there.

But is a poet a poet without a reader?

And how fitting this poem is, in a week when all of my social feeds continue to blow up with stunning images of Tutu Pele.

LAVA

Love is not lost

But desperately alive

It burns with the red orange fire of subterranean lava

Scorching me inside my shell of cool pink skin.

I wish I could let it flow like Pele in a halo of flame

To wash me with its purifying blaze.

Or engulf us in passionate union

Reaching my lover to melt his fears.

Instead the black clouds and steam of anger

Rise to encircle my head

Bursting in a storm of cleansing tears.

I know of no way to be the smith

Forging strong metal in place

Of the false solidity of his ice-bound fears

I am a creature of fire, he of water.

Hot wind blowing over ashes whispers

That the truest strength of all

Is in the fluidity of stream and river

Never grasping, never hesitating

Reflecting not reacting

Always flowing gently onward

Caressing and embracing obstacles in its path.

There is no need to move mountains to honor and inhabit them.