Etna they'd witnessed with its gaping maw
spewing up sacraments of fire, boulders—
fruits of the Underworld, its spawn—
ballistic delivery of altars.

But the Karst when they came upon it
belied experience; not throwing up,
but swallowing down, into dolines and
sink-holes, fields with their goats, all
whole, with a chasmal belch.
There were invisible shades that drank
beneath the human world from waterfalls.

So here their priests were charged to bring
oblations, work of their own smithing,
as spears, swords, necklets, beads, borne
in the pale hands of virgins, trusting
all would be well for them.

The way I walk today.

a wavering hand
at the abyss edge
crimson cyclamens

Published in Spitting Pips (Equinox Press, 2009).