I like to imagine
Mother Nature kicking back
In her Adirondack
Enjoying the majestic dance
Of her creation
Choreographed with geological rhythm
The chuckles she must chortle
As all her little creatures
Scurry about the stage
Like so many Keystone Kops
In a silent era comedy
None more ridiculous
Than we
As the day fails to black
Half the sky is stars
Half is clouds
Which continue to roll in
Soon enough so thick
Even a half moon couldn’t peek through
Were there a moon at all
But I’m grateful for the stars
Too the clouds
Behind which
Twinkling pinpricks in the blackness
Play hide-and-seek
With star gazers like me
In the quiet heat of the night
The road takes me through
A deepening darkness
Toward a near horizon
Of fantastical colour
Receding with the sun
I depress the accelerator
Hoping at least to keep pace
But wishing to my core
That someday
I will catch up
I watch you
Taking in the wide oxbow landscape
A thousand feet deep
While I photograph the small details
Of tumbled stone and distant valleys
If you could embrace
The vastness of space
Then even a galaxy
Would be a minor detail
In the landscape of infinity
And I?
Not even a speck
To speak my insignificance
Demands more consideration
Than my infinitesimal displacement
Of time and space deserves
And yet
Here are we
The infinitesimal
Contemplating the infinite
Which I suppose
Is big enough
For me
Perhaps
Even…
Divine
Like the way a river
Has carved this earth
For millions of years
And left a canyon here
To pique our wonder
The winding path
Which takes me well beyond
Desired goals
Has served me well
Offered possibility
Once well outside my ken
Comforts challenged
Bound’ries shattered
With every step astray
From oft trod trails
Discover unknown countries
Within myself
A lesser man would I be
Who’d stayed the straight and narrow course
To some place known
When I’d set out
Arrives the dawn in golden glory
Sunlight’s kiss good morning
Rise ye
Rise ye
The universe is calling
Sometimes
Life moves at a pace
I cannot keep
Or rather
Life moves
I simply do not
And in my disastrous stillness
The dust storm rolls in
Without hesitation
To Roll
Over
Me
Move or don’t move
Retreat or don’t retreat
Seek cover or…
Let
The dust
Take me
Water of life
Cuts into stone
Reveals depths
To be plumbed
A hard journey down
A harder journey back
Rewards every step
Even the most painful
Power snakes through epochs
Scale lost in time and space
Human stands on canyon edge
diminished
As a photographer
I have never been satisfied with
Two dimensions
A single moment in time
Or even reality
I prefer
To create
Rather than
Record
Light is my palette
A digital file my canvas
A computer my brush
And all the world
Is beautiful data
To be transformed into art
Pix to Words 