Day 27 Sound Poem: Flowing Lava

The sound (and video) for Day 27 was flowing lava.  Pahoehoe lava, to be specific.  And, I knew that mainly because my oldest son, Zach, was obsessed with volcanos when he was younger.  As he learned, we learned, and in the process came to know a lot about volcanos.  Which led to this poem:

A Mind Like Pahoehoe

When his grandfather gave him a video

about the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s,

he memorized it right down

to the inflection and flow

of the narrator’s voice.

He threw himself into volcanos,

their names becoming household words:

Etna, Vesuvius, Kilauea,

Coatepeque and Arenal,

Pinatubo, Sakurajima,

and the nearly unpronounceable

Icelandic volcanos, whose names

he could rattle off with ease.

We learned the different shapes,

which he would model

in the infield during T-ball games,

till I moved him to right field

(for safety’s sake),

and the different types of lava:

comfortable-sounding pillow,

rough a‘a (useful in Scrabble),

smooth, fun-to-say pahoehoe.

We delved into tectonics

and subduction zones until

the Ring of Fire was more

than just a song, and in my mind,

Johnny Cash forever walks a line

around the Pacific Rim.

It’s been like this with everything

on which he’s fixed his gaze.

His mind is like pahoehoe,

relentlessly flowing,

consuming all in his path.