This week, Liberty and I decided to return to our local Writer’s Club after a very extended break. (With the exception of the Christmas meals, we turned up for those 😉)

I haven’t done any writing outside of this blog for probably well over a year now and I decided I’d like to try getting back into it – even if that just means writing one thing a month as my MDWC ‘homework’.

The task over Christmas was to write a piece of any type inspired by the work of William Turner.

It turns out that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Turner’s work – it’s all a bit dark and depressing – though I can see the artistic merit of it and appreciate the skills that go into it.

After a lot of flicking through his works on Google and general despair that I wasn’t going to be inspired by anything and that going back to MDWC was an awful idea, I came across the painting Mount Vesuvius In Eruption and knew it was ‘the one’.

 

Something about the colours and the crowd of lost looking people on the beach by a roiling sea got into my imagination. It wasn’t providing me with anything more cheerful than the other paintings but it was giving me an emotional response other than ‘meh’.

A bit of playing around and I found myself writing a poem for the first time in a long time.

Here it is:

Mount Vesuvius In Eruption

Papa, have you seen it?

The sky is on fire.

Papa, can you feel it?

My throat is burning.

Papa, can’t you hear it?

The Mountain is roaring.

 

Papa, have you seen it?

The ocean is burning.

Papa, can you feel it?

The ground is quaking fierce.

Papa, can’t you hear it?

I think there’s someone screaming.

 

Papa, Papa, where are you?

There’s nothing here but dust.

Papa, I’m afraid now.

It’s getting hard to breathe.

Papa, should I wait for you?

I don’t want to go outside alone.

 

Papa?

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