June Month of Poetry #4: Tunguska

Today in mysteries of history poems: the Tunguska event.

The Tunguska event was a massive aerial explosion that occurred around 7am on 30 June 1908 over a region in western Siberia, Russia. The explosion registered on instruments worldwide and led to noticeable atmospheric effects for months afterward, as well as levelling trees and burning land over a wide area.  The closest observers were some reindeer herders asleep in their tents in several camps about 30 km  from the site. They were blown into the air and knocked unconscious; one man blown into a tree later died.

The scientific consensus is that the Tunguska event was likely caused by a fragment of a meteorite, but there is no conclusive evidence to validate this as no fragments have been found. Some scientists suggest that the cause may instead have been the explosion of a large natural gas reservoir underground, that had been experiencing leaks and that would have blown up due to ignition sources as lightning. Alternatively, some have pointed to the possibility of a Verneshot (a very powerful volcanic eruption event caused by the buildup of gas deep underneath the crust).

In the absence of verifiable answers, though, the field is open for more out-there explanations, which include but are not limited to:

• A small black hole passing through the earth
• Early undocumented testing of precursor nuclear bombs 
• A super-missile of some kind by a country that had been keeping its fantastically advanced technology secret (and still is, given it hasn't shown up again yet)
• Alien involvement: either a spaceship blowing up unintentionally in the air, OR a deliberate impact for some opaque alien reason that we don't understand yet but possibly connected to disseminating alien material onto the earth. (This idea was riffed on by the X-Files episode called Tunguska which was a cracking double-header in season 4).

Tunguska

we were in our tents and sleeping then,
mostly,
although I was on my haunches in the gathering trees 
picking through the kindling for a cooking fire
humming a little song to the herd as they twitched and snorted in the cool summer morning air
pressed flank to flank, their bodies fat with summer pasture

the others were sleeping, when I looked up and I saw

the sky torn like cloth along the seam
high above the forest
a falling star with a fretful lashing tail
the sky lit alight in racing blue flame
brighter than the gentle lemon sun

as if a vision of some desperate battle from beyond the world's borderlands 
too far away and too close to understand
the fire burning and not burning
and the sound:
the tensile whining at my nerve-endings 
the pressure building in my ears until

(I think I screamed, but I cannot say)

bang
bang
bang

awaking in a lucid dream of perdition
the trees flat to the crying earth, like summer grass scythed away
the trees catching hold of the fire from the sky, and burning as if they had never had another purpose
all the while the land is roaring like it has been stirred to fury
it is roaring and wailing and shaking its wrinkled fist at the sky
the world lost in smoke and the choking scent of terror
a battle lost, and lost, and lost

and the herd stampeding, terrified
running from the smell of dying 
running from the alien fire
running from we who did not know and did not see and could not save them

and the wind will fall and the sound  will ebb, and the forest
will burn away to nubbins

and no stone or fragment will remain to tell of it
to answer when the bruised land asks why
to tell us, flown up from tent and trees, what it was
what it was we saw, in that tiny gap between sound and darkness
what light that tiny crack let in.