Pyroclast
for Craig Arnold


A poet makes the news
for wandering off, gone
missing in search of
poems on volcanoes.
Somewhere among the cinder
cones or perhaps the calderas,

rescuers remain convinced
that you did not burn
in a lava lake, or dome,
but met heavy vegetation
or a steep ravine on your
way down. Beneath rock

magma pools as crustal plates
converge. Are you here, where
the new earth cools? Did you
melt with the mantel plumes?
Or are you ash, floating above
a ring of fire? From the photo

you took yourself in mud
they follow your footprint
and a viscous hope: that
you are yet made flesh,
not disappeared like mollusks
from a thousand empty shells.