Category: Olympus OM-2

Main Street

Arriving in Kashgar
Was like landing
On an alien planet
A stranger in a strange land

Sights, sounds, smells
Unlike anywhere else
In a country
Unlike anywhere else

In a haze of incense
The pilgrims
And the tourists
Come

To Tibet
In the heart of Beijing
It’s so decreed
By The Party

“Take my picture!”

She’d seen my camera
A foreigner with a camera

“Take my picture!”

Happily, I oblige
Line her up with the street
The cyclist, passing by

Abandoned
Grey and withering
Under a hot blue sky

First glass
Now wood
And the grass grows high

We leave our mark on things
Our names
A symbol
A statement
Of politics
Or preference
Of love
Or hatred
Or indifference
Or ignorance

Here and there the elements conspire
Like where the Earth heaves up
And breathes out strange beauties
From its belly of fire

Like here, where the fires burned
In Yellowstone
And the sky shone purple
Above the sun’s yellow, turned

Some ascribe great powers to time:
To heal
To create
To destroy

But time itself wields no might
But for agents of change
Like the workings of nature and her creatures

The air is heavy
Laden
Saturated

Clings to my flesh
Beads on my clothing
Thick with moisture

The sun goes down while
The colour goes up
And it’s a beauty
A flood of neon yellow

How does the physics do that?

Red tide of fire
Flash floods every morning
With the sun’s first rays