We celebrate our twenty-year class reunion,
notes vibrate through the atmosphere
full of frenzy like Debussy’s two movements:
Festivals and Sirens. Whirling around the bonfire
raising dust in the clearing behind the Grange Hall.
The band, a standup rock-and-crazy-roll group
with legs skinny as bed slats,
wail their tune of love lost and found and lost again.
The same story we heard back in high school
when we swayed to “Only the Lonely”
in the basement. Roy Orbison,
master of the romantic apocalypse
everyone dreaded.
A supersonic boom rattles windows
as Mount St. Helens blows out sideways.
The forest flattened
by a force equivalent to five hundred
Hiroshimas.
Ash billows from the new crater,
climbing miles into the sky. Blue lightning
flashes in the cloud. Downwind, for hundreds of miles,
day turns to night. Roads and airports close.
Ash falls like heavy snow. Downstream, rivers choke
with mud, trees and ice blocks.
Harry Truman, David Johnston and fifty-five others
lost under smoldering rubble.
About the Author: Pat West
Pat Phillips West lives in Olympia, WA. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in Haunted Waters Press, Persimmon Tree, VoiceCatcher, San Pedro River Review, Slipstream, Gold Man Review and elsewhere.