Though patience
And softness
Cannot resolve
Every problem
The peace flowing
From their practice
Bears a reward
Of its own
As I watch
The sun set
Upon the stone
The river cut
But there are times
Places
To not mind being
Lost
The walls seemed sculpted
Textured
With saturated tones of
Warmth
And so I walked
Aimless
Lost in the beauty of the
Walls
Until suddenly I was
Outside
Safe, yet wanting to go
Back
Sometimes it is
OK
To lose my
Self
Of space and time
Of politics and social norms
Of family and friends
The things that stay
But never stay the same
The ephemeral things
Lost and soon forgotten
Nothing ever stays
But change
Which is often the point
Of these things we do to landscapes
Change the landscape
Change each other
Change ourselves
Note:
Rule change this week!
See below.
Undeterred and
Undirected by
Duty or responsibility
Led not by
Leash or force
Nor beholden to another’s wish
But to stay
In just one place
So long as restless heart desires this
Then move along
To some place other
There to find what’s there to see
I’ve never studied
What the Poets say
Nor worried much
How they place their words
Or why that way
I do not know
How to write a sonnet
I am not sure
What makes pentameter
Iambic
I hope that’s OK
I scramble up an ebony mound
To find a landscape of ebony mounds
Growing to distant mountains
All of the same ebony skin
“At least,” I think, out loud
Into the air so dry
It swallows up the words
Right off my tongue
“the falling sun seems less
Like a fire
On a cast-iron skillet.”
Another
Another
Another
How many layers deep?
I see only the next
Unpack another
See another
Unpack
Another
Until I don’t want
To see anymore
Unpack anymore
Dig anymore
Intentional purpose
Inexorable decay
Dynamic tension
Eternally entwined
