Canaries in a Coalmine

by Dominik Brotherton, UK

I sit on a boulder that harbours a pregnant explosion;
unpredictable and total in its perennial extinctive catharsis;
& listen for a seismic whisper in this calm basaltine night.

I lie on a volcanic sheath;
separating me from the magmatic plumage of mantle convection;
& wonder if the grasses of the world will tonight forever conceal their blades.

I look up at the nuclear fusion of a billion burning suns;
here, squinting specks of sugar in the obsidian void;
& ask the void my conflagrant questions about our inexorable tectonic fate.

Fire above me.
Fire below me.
Cold in the wind's midnight breath.