Yellowstone Poem by Procyon Mukherjee

Much above the stationery plume, the red changed
Colours - huckleberry among the sagebrush steppes
Rooted beneath the upper mantle
The mud pot smoking among the briar

The white rush to the skies in the Old Faithful
Came from the upwelling
Like a steam vent from a cooker
Jutting like a white out
Among the bent grass

The grizzlies, never alone in the Lemonade Lake
Beautiful children, almost orderly, kind,
Among the obsidian and the thermophiles
Life, silently followed

Or the elks and the prey horns, colliding
As if the play must capture the continental divide
Something that is beyond the caldera and its hues
Wetlands from the turquoise, deposits
Living among the cyano-bacteria

The yellow is woven in the ice
Cold winds from prismatic spring
Smells of hot sulphur
Somewhere the colourful ash is buried
With the remains of a million years