I return to fabled places
Find there
Always
Something new
A different light
A new story
History added
Or revised
Here mittens and buttes
Formations once remembered
For Spaghetti Westerns
Now where Forrest Gump
Just plain stopped runnin’
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Mother Nature: Earth’s Artist in Residence
Beauty sculpted
With the softest tools
The utmost patience
Beheld by a mind
For a fleeting moment
Recorded for a moment more
While the sculptor
Chips away
Her pieces ever
Works in progress
Not a one complete
Trickle
Just a trickle
May restore
What once was lost
Love
Hope
Filling pools of possibility
Boxed In
Boxed in
Egress blocked
Walls impenetrable
But a blue sky
Offers promise
Possibility beyond
So I seek alternatives
Unknown paths
Improbable routes
The unexplored
May hide secrets
New trails to blaze
Half the Sky is Stars
As the day fails to black
Half the sky is stars
Half is clouds
Which continue to roll in
Soon enough so thick
Even a half moon couldn’t peek through
Were there a moon at all
But I’m grateful for the stars
Too the clouds
Behind which
Twinkling pinpricks in the blackness
Play hide-and-seek
With star gazers like me
In the quiet heat of the night
Warped ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #325
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
Falling Away to Depth
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
One of Many Paths to Goodness
Raised beneath
Steeples and spires
Kneeling Sitting Standing
In pews row on row
First Holy Communion
Confirmation
Confession
Ash Wednesday
Palm Sunday
Incense and palm leaves
Midnight Mass
Now another confession:
Never a believer
Earliest memories
Saying what was expected
Doing what was expected
Praying aloud the lie on my lips
Though there were Pastors
Two at least
Who made as much
A philosophy of sermon
As theology
Who bespoke love
And compassion
Forgiveness
And kindness
As if these were as important
As believing in Father, Son and Holy Ghost
I kept the compassionate love
Discarded the trinity
And for a long while
Wanted nothing to do
With religion
Or the religious
Until I finally saw
The strength faith gives my mother
Courage, resilience, tenacity
Powered by compassion, love and kindness
All in God’s name
Now I understand
Something about the nature of goodness
And the many paths we may travel
To bring ourselves to the love
Which is its foundation
Details Details
I watch you
Taking in the wide oxbow landscape
A thousand feet deep
While I photograph the small details
Of tumbled stone and distant valleys
If you could embrace
The vastness of space
Then even a galaxy
Would be a minor detail
In the landscape of infinity
And I?
Not even a speck
To speak my insignificance
Demands more consideration
Than my infinitesimal displacement
Of time and space deserves
And yet
Here are we
The infinitesimal
Contemplating the infinite
Which I suppose
Is big enough
For me
Perhaps
Even…
Divine
Like the way a river
Has carved this earth
For millions of years
And left a canyon here
To pique our wonder
Hours Before the Dawn, the Sun Rises
Sky and lake
Rippled with moonlight
Clouds a veil
Drawn over coy constellations
On the shore
She stands
In a susurrus of near silence
But for the lap of wavelets
On salt crusted sand
Intent on the texts
Passed between friends
“I am free” she writes
“Good” comes the reply
A pause, and then, “Be safe!”
“I will” she taps out
Adds “I don’t know how long
I’ll be AWOL”
A long wait before
“Your leave is authorized” and
“Take all the time you need”
“I will” she repeats
She smiles
Throws the phone into the lake
Where concentric ripples
Interrupt the linear
Gradually diminishing
Until they disappear altogether
She stands a good while longer
Content
Relieved
If a little anxious
About what the coming daylight will bring
Then shrugs it off
“Fuck him”
Hours before the dawn
The darkness has already ended
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