Erupting Voice

Where is the Volcano?

The ignition of imagery and imagination?

The spark in Mali’s “I Teach for the Fire?”

The candle, still burning with questions carved into its smooth wax —

Its light splashing back onto the page in warm glow?

The white-hot weld of ideas captured?

Where is the Weld?

At what point does the metaphor become mechanical?

Stark contrast from naturalist movements, the pencil

Even though wood and graphite is still a tool made by man

And even so, still returns to the dust from which it came.

But the ideas produced still disperse into the ether

Untethered by rope or fire or man, they are birthed

Stretched, left to simmer and smolder they return to the fire.

This volcano is not a classroom but instead a cauldron

With ideas burning to burst, potentially deadly.

But what about ideas makes life worth living

If not for the ability to take a risk by reading them aloud?