Memory of a far place.

If I hadn't been to the other side and seen for myself

I wouldn't have understood the conflation of volcanoes where

Distance pulls to flatten and attenuate, to sphagnum green

and paints beautiful muscular form.


From this place of future memory I see 

Cumulus in perspective

above the approaches.

One vent surrounded by a crop of stone

Another turned to quarry.


It's in the flat mountains between, where

Curious disciplines collude and conspire,

A thousand years after the fact,

To speculate on long dead lovers.