You probably already know that Mount St. Helens experienced a minor eruption yesterday, almost precisely 25 years since the big one in 1980. Still, the burst was enough to send ash and steam nearly 7 miles high into the evening sky—a rather humbling reminder of nature’s magnitude and scale, I thought.
It put me in mind of one of my favorite poems—a sort of geological love-poem—from the inimitable Northwest poet, Gregory Hischak. Here are a few lines:
The calm eye of a hurricane / Curled in the passenger seat / She breathes quietly now, she sleeps / She is possibly volcanic in origin.
You can find the full length version of this poem in Assemblage With Crow. And you can find more of Hischak’s writing here and here.
