1815: Mount Tambora offers ashes to monstrous wind currents
And those ocean-stirred patterns create a 'summer of darkness'
For Mary Shelley haunted by her own life
On the shore of Lake Geneva
Those ashes shook themselves out across an ocean
To sleep in a thin sheet of grey cinder
On the North Saskatchewan river bank
A settled page from Mary's book is all-of-time
Pressed into a cut bank cross-section
The river connects me to a dead volcano's blast
And a poor misunderstood creature
"Borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance."