I watch it after the volcano erupts, sunset. Astonished by the colors,
dirty and weeping
it looks like
the gods roasting
a piece of the world
at the end
of a dirt road, or
a woman with a harp
made of fire among
palm trees in the haze,
where she disappears,
only her footprints
where she walks
into the sky.
Are you listening?
If only you had watched carefully the signs, the crows might
have scriptured:
The future is coming
in blaze and dust.
Must I paint a flock
of swallows
finding angry comfort
in evening trees?
Heat triggers lightning
in the smoke now.
No, don’t touch
the summer hail
burning in the grass.
Are you listening?
Because just one more
boom, and the sun with all its miracles will not come up tomorrow.

Lenny DellaRocca is founding editor and former publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal. He’s the author of four poetry collections, and his work has appeared in One, Slipstream, Nimrod, Seattle Rev., POEM, Laurel Rev., Fairy Tale Rev, The Meadow and Hawaii Pacific Rev. Poems forthcoming in Cimarron Review and North Dakota Quarterly. He was interviewed by Grace Cavalieri for The Poet and The Poem on NPR and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has invented the Epoem a new form on display at his new poetry journal, Witchery, which is embedded online at South Florida Poetry Journal.