Daymares and other dreams

Close your eyes, show me the island
of your hermit crab dreams,
where they crawl inside kitchen pipes
scattered like skittering pebbles all night,
then gone the way they came come morning light

Quantum leap with me
where we could travel alone for a while,
companions of the Doctor, outrunning
mortality’s ticking clock, maybe
thumbing a ride out on a Firefly

If flood waters rise
above the lip of our valleys,
you’re the one I’d want along
to climb atop with, up the mountain
grade, share the lonely view

with the hawks and with me,
find another way to dance, be
in an empty room, no one’s backs
to bump into, no children about at
our knees, if there’s ever

a place called Jericho, I’ll steal
atop the wall at night,
and lower the scarlet rope
for you.

© 2013 Laura Levesque

Sakurajima Volcano with Lightning

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Rietze (Alien Landscapes on Planet Earth)Explanation: Why does a volcanic eruption sometimes create lightning? Pictured above, the Sakurajima volcano in southern Japan was caught erupting in early January. Magma bubbles so hot they glow shoot away as liquid rock bursts through the Earth’s surface from below. The above image is particularly notable, however, for the lightning bolts caught near the volcano’s summit. Why lightning occurs even in common thunderstorms remains a topic of research, and the cause of volcanic lightning is even less clear. Surely, lightning bolts help quench areas of opposite but separated electric charges. One hypothesis holds that catapulting magma bubbles or volcanic ash are themselves electrically charged, and by their motion create these separated areas. Other volcanic lightning episodes may be facilitated by charge-inducing collisions in volcanic dust. Lightning is usually occurring somewhere on Earth, typically over 40 times each second.