Volcano Woman Refugia

Volcano Woman Refugia
December 1, 2008
(From a in-class exercise in my Linfield College Creative Writing class Fall 2008. We heard a tribal story about Frog Woman/Volcano Woman; we listed the images in the story and chose one to draw; then we wrote from the persona of the image.)
This is an image of a mother and a daughter staring out of a cave in the mountains. They have taken refuge there against the erupting nearby volcano that is running rivers of fire down the valley and all around them. They are sitting out the fire. Everyone, life as they have known it, is being annihilated. But if they wait, they will atone the sins of their village to Frog Volcano Woman and be taken up under the wings of Eagle and join the Eagle People.

Volcano Woman sends forth
her rivers of fire like
slow-moving serpents with
red crystal eyes
as my mother and I hold our brilliant shawls
over our streaming hair.
We sit cross-legged in the doorway.
We are the last
of our clan.
Through the smoke
that blurs the morning sun,
we will see the Eagle.
One under each wing,
we will fly to a land
where the Eagle People
scatter lodges along
a river bank and we
will become them:
out of Fire–Flight.

One thought on “Volcano Woman Refugia”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *