Jan Schmidt
MONTE CORONA AND A NIGHTMARE Stones are strewn across this rocky plain. The rutted malpais * gives up no secret just a haphazard jumble of browned boulders. Sculptures like sentinels, gnomes, feral creatures, Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell. I walk on an almost invisible picon path towards the peak of the mountain, watching my steps. Fearful of falling, of cracking my aging, thinning bones In spurge or a ravine of stones. Ahead the first sign of the eruption thousands of years before. A calderita, a sinkhole carved out of soil. A whirlpool of rocks sunk deep In the earth. Dusted with scrub bush. An empty eye socket sucking in all it cannot see. Later a nightmare erupts in me at 3 am. I am alone in an arid desert land In a cairn of stones. I am cuddling a baby, pressed against me. Protecting her from fierce Atlantic winds. She is all heated breath and swallowed gulps of tears. I whisper, “You’re safe. Safe.”
38 Poetry
