Basalt Princess

by Stephanie V Sears
 
Pacific reaches for the valley. 
In side glances        see-throughs 
in fuchsia dawns and hell fire dusks 
                                       with a latent thrust of impudence: 
outer space beckons to the sea trench. 
 
This once was her isle -  
with quenching guava scrub, 
manioc, taro fields, mango orchards, 
decorous breadfruit trees - 
glugging the sky   
between Capricorn and Equator. 
 
She opens the shadows of her house to me. 
Looks me up and down until  
I ebb into remoteness. 
Ninety years have streamlined  
her down to timelessness. 
 
Crowned with island rose and ivory.  
Porpoise teeth inter-woven with buds 
gleaming like mortuary relics. 
Glory still nestles in the furrows  
of her face smoked in tattoos, 
a Brueghel blue of soot and thunder 
from head to toe. 
 
Her voice, a blast of surf, 
a dark inclusion in a storm’s crystal. 
I can see her as then, 
draped in royal tapa,  
one splendid smooth arm 
fanning the dormant air. 
  
Then my own time topples 
when, suddenly clairvoyant, 
she predicts that money 
will devastate the world.