The infant Earth
Burps up her core
Lays down a shield of stone
Comes the ice
With crushing force
Carves relief into the shield
Finally, life returns
In league with time and weather
Draws detail upon the lines
Here I stand
On ancient land
To capture nature’s beauty
The day’s last rays
Fall on rocky shores
Of some
Forgotten cove
Alone with thoughts
And seabird cries
A rush of waves
Fall against the shoal
The errant noise of restless brain
Soon enough is quelled
As nature sets her subtle pace
Gentle on my soul
Sun hangs low on the horizon
Light subdued behind cloud bands
Tide well out
Yet still receding with haste
Earth’s exhaustion
Feels equal to my own
So I amble back to the trailer
With daylight’s final ember
Sizzling out
On the muddy shore
Long days on the road
Have eaten away
At my reserves
So the tide may remain out
For a few days yet
While my inner sun
Recharges
Under the wan light
Of stars in a new moon sky
They call this “golden hour”
But every hour spent with you
Is golden
The grasses and shrubs bow and flutter
On a windswept fen
Long Range Mountains leap from the plain
Testament to the crushing power of colliding continents
And I am reminded
Of a small boy
Heart rent through and through
By harsh words and hard gestures
It’s alright, boy
You bent like the grass
And rose up like the mountains
There is no small beauty in that
The sun bid good night
The moon rubbed sleep from her eyes
“Woo hooo!!! Let’s party!”
Big bend in the river comin’ up!
No idea what’s around it
Can’t even see the turn all that clear
Or what’s just ahead fer that matter
No matter
We done plenty a these
Always works out
Usually fer the better
I suppose there’ll be
Remarkable new things to discover
Around that corner
All kinds of possibilities
Don’t worry none about the fog
Things’ll be clear enough once we get close
Just the way the corner up ahead
Is gettin’ clear enough to know the turn
Kinda pretty idn’t it?
The way the fog only gives ya part a the picture
Then just the green
Then trees and the cracks in rocky cliffs
Ya only get enough to know how to move on
With some foreshadowin’
Of just how beautiful it’s gonna be
When it all becomes clear
Nothing reminds me
Of just how small a speck I am
In this universe
Than being in an expansive landscape
At golden hour
I sit with that
Groove on my insignificance
Feel community
With all the other insignificant things
I share existence with
The rock I’m sitting on
The trees and shrubs around me
The wildflower eking out a life
In a crack of the craggy cliff face
Each ephemeral wave breaking on the shore
We’re all here
For the briefest glimmer of time
Even the half billion year-old rock
I’m sitting on
The tiniest things in the tiniest time
Because what is any one thing
No matter how large
Or how old
When measured against
The infinite eternal
But here I am
For the briefest slice of a moment
In this miniscule scene
Of a star setting over a planet’s horizon
Feeling connected to all of it
And for that moment
I am not just a part of it all
But filled with it all
Expanding until I am as vast and timeless
As the universe
.
.
.
.
.
Then the sun sets
I go back to the car
And tow my little trailer
To some nice little spot
To camp for the night
Apparently
Even enormity
Is ephemeral
But the memory of it
Lasts a lifetime
He saw change coming
Had to come
Life altering change
Had to be
He’d come to a cul de sac
Every step now
Just circled the perimeter
But what next?
What path led forward?
He had no idea
All he had
Was a little sparkle
Of hope
Enough for the confidence
To step out of the circle
The way life clung
To the cracks and crevices
Of the hard rock cliffs
Fascinated him
He imagined it
Like the bottom trawlers
That once dragged The Banks
For cod and haddock
Rather than nets, though
It was glaciers that scraped
The cliff face smooth
Erasing all signs of life
It took thousands of years
Of time and erosion
For life to eek out
This small foothold
His grandfather used to tell him
About throwing a bucket
Over the side
And cod would fill it up
When they closed the cod fishery
It was like another ice age
Swept across Newfoundland
Few fishers survived it
He imagined the ocean floor
Scraped clean by the trawlers
And wondered how long
Before the cod came back
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