Category: Landscape

Charcoal and Smudge

The clouds
Descended like a cloak
Over the mountains

The light
Flat as the calm sea
And equally tranquil

A scene
Rendered entirely in charcoal and smudge
But for a band of cottony hanging fog

I love the blue skies
Snow-capped peaks
Atop emerald mountains
Over turquoise sea

But here is a rainforest
In this brooding monochrome
The nature of its beauty lies

And come to revel in it
Have I and many others

I’ve never seen the expression
Cradled in the clouds
Rendered with such concinnity
As along the Sea to Sky

The rain installed
It’s own kind of pretty
On a day otherwise
Oh so grey and dreary

The Sea to Sky
Seems no less grand
Or mighty
When the sky
Hangs low
And the clouds
Engulf the mountains

And here am I
In my little boat
Hauling logs across
The slate blue sea
Of a world
I hold in awe

I marvel
At all the many worlds I see
From just one place
In time and space

Moments within moments
Scenes within scenes
Lives in the midst of living

If only I take
The time to look

There is a place
I’ve never been
Far across the water
In billowed shrouds of mist

A place of wistful
Beckonings
To my
Imagination

Even in a world of grey
I seek the beauty to be found
In the delineation of tone
The somber dance of line and form

I find peace, calm
In a space undistracted
By the flash of colour
Or the dominance of black or white

It is my city
Across the inlet
Vibrant and beautiful
Mundane and passionless
A sometimes sleepy little town
On the edge of it all
Terminal city

But from here
Across the inlet
It resembles only
A small forest of brick and steel
Concrete and glass
Its denizens
Too small to register

Like leaves we touched, he sang
But I could not understand
Until I had not been touched
For all those many years

I am the tree
Not just the leaf
I manifest

Not of the tree
Not separate from it

But the tree, itself