Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

One hand behind his back. At ease,
tractor-tread boots slightly splayed,
the Ranger hitches his weight left to right.
Lose someone here most nights. A grin.
Just swallows them up. Half-turns his head
in respect for the sizzling black river
behind, the treeless grassless
slow conveyor of ash.

When winds are favourable, viscosity
just so, he can walk across it like Jesus.
Crust tolerates his flesh for as long
as it takes to make a step. Air though
is unappeased – swirls him furiously,
ripples his body. He tells me how
for some reason he can't yet fathom
it seems to draw the newlyweds –

arm in arm at magma's threshold as if
at the rim of a future already passing them by.
One guy (married that morning) saw the Ranger
cross, and courted fate. Before they could
get to him, his sneakers melted. He forgot
how to walk, folded into the flow. A single
soundless spasm. They found his bride
rocking back and forth, beyond reach.

Another pair pitched tent on the bank.
Dawn, and the earth had moved, cast them
adrift on a shrinking raft of stone.
One woman turned to find her husband
gone, spent all night in still dark panic.
At twilight, talcked white with ash,
her other half returned: turn-ups
encrusted with sulphur, eyes glowing.

It's getting dark. Now and again
a lazy yellow eye slits open, contemplates us
as would a vast and hellish crocodile, then blinks
shut. I offer the Ranger my hand, turn
for the hotel's cocktail-and-swordfish cool.
Ascending the brow, I look back – see him
out walking, dimly small, where survival hangs
on a sole's substance, or how bad the need

to tread our still-flowing afterbirth.
I lick salt from my lips, heavy now
to the bone. Find the solitary path back down.
Lengthen my stride on its firmness.