A tumult of stone
Fallen amongst the grasses
From ragged cliffs above
Ancient diminished crags
Once, perhaps, grand as snow capped horizon
First to soil, then to life, feeding hungry bison
A tumult of stone
Fallen amongst the grasses
From ragged cliffs above
Ancient diminished crags
Once, perhaps, grand as snow capped horizon
First to soil, then to life, feeding hungry bison
Salted inner sea
Perturbed not at all
By even a breeze
Offers its peaceful cradle
To the failing sun
The air
Briny scent of death
The water
Still, thick with salt
The sand
Crusted, brittle, shards sharp underfoot
But the skies
Azure brushed with cirrus wash
And the sun
A hot glitter off the ripples
A beach day
Nonetheless
Sunlight skitters
Off the rippled lake
As a flat stone thrown
From a practiced hand
I prefer the kind of spirituality
Which harbours no intention
To make me feel small
Or subject to the judgment of others
Not even gods
Just as I have no desire
To judge anyone
Not even myself
A condition
Which I am ever on the path
Of unlearning
I enter a cathedral
As if into warped space
Not warped as a physicist might think
But as in how a mystic might think
That is, a spiritual space or dimension
Bent, folded and manipulated
To conform to a specific configuration
Long ago transcribed into books
From collective memories
Predating written language
Aside from a certain wonder
At the passion and dedication
To the exquisite expression
Of humanity’s greater achievements
In art and architecture
A cathedral reminds me
Of the power of group thinking
For both good and ill
How this can become a tight leash
On an individual whose spirit
Simply refuses to conform
But it also reminds me
Of the exultant satisfaction
I experienced
When I finally broke the leash
Chose my own path
And found my way to a spiritual space
Which conformed to me
Not that I am without
My own warped sense of spiritual dimension
But the distortion is familiar to me
Has meaning for me
And brings me to a place of peace
Some scenes defy description
EvenĀ a photograph
Cannot capture them
Sometimes you just have to be there
In the moment
No. Always be in the moment
No words can describe a scene
Or a moment
No photograph
Can transport me to a place in time
Or fill me with the grace of presence
The mesa falls away
Into the depths of early evening
Low sun illuminates
Undulating canyons and buttes
Sedimented sandstone
Layers indicating a scale
Powerfully daunting
And exquisite
And I
Stopped halfway between
Floor and ceiling
Sense myself in the centre of aeons
Epochs pass
Every hundred steps or so
Up the trail
A hundred years
A thousand
A hundred thousand
A million
Unwinding time
As species come
And species go
Great, fearsome lizards
Ruled the known universe
For 165 million years
But only in the last tens of steps
Before the top
Do I walk in the footsteps
Of my most ancient ancestors
A paltry 6 or so million years ago
I am reminded
For all our accomplishments and cleverness
We are but toddlers on this Earth
Itself nothing more
Than a pale blue dot
Circling a minor star
Spiraling in an outer arm
Of one galaxy
In a universe dotted
With hundreds of billions
Layer upon layer
Of time and space
Stretch out to scales
Unimaginable
A few steps more
I stand atop the mesa
Returned to the time and place
That belongs to me now
Deep, heavy breaths
To gain my equilibrium
While scanning across the vista
Tallying a few hundred million years of strata
A snippet
In an existence billions of years in the making
Layer upon layer of time and space
To make this collection of sediments
Which seems so very vast and ancient
But is no more than a cosmic blip
In all that was
All that is
And all that will be
I feel small
Fleeting
Insignificant
Yet
Somehow
And nonetheless
Stupendously magnificent
Because in all this immensity
Stands me
A self-aware collection of molecules
Contemplating the inconceivable miracle
That is my own consciousness
Tucked away in some small backwater
Of eternal infinity
Just how fucking exquisite is that?
And the view up here is awesome.
The sun sets
Light falls away to darkness
But for the little beacon of light
That is me
Rule of Thirds tells me
Never place the horizon
In the middle of the frame
But I am often as enraptured
With the sky as the land
So break that rule without remorse