Tag: United States of America

Nature’s Lovely Hand

It is a landscape made
Of sparse rain and heat

Yet over time,
This brush and paint
Create a land
Of uncommon beauty

Sometimes I just like to sit back
And marvel at Nature’s sense of fun
Her playful way with shape and form
Her vivacious turns with landscape

The indigo and violet of night
Chase the furious sun from the sky
Livid oranges and yellows
Cling to the horizon
But soon enough are vanquished

Rising out of a fantastical landscape
Of weathered granite, gravel and scrub
The Joshua Tree

Like a gnarled old man
The elder of the land
With a mighty presence

It is nature which most often
Takes away my breath
With feats of scale
And magnificence

Sometimes, even we small creatures
We engineers and builders
With concrete and steel
Overcome mighty nature

I plunked myself down
On the well-travelled way
Which served me so well
For many a day

I didn’t notice
Until almost too late
That the times were a-changing
At a very fast rate

Eventually
Every wall falls
Or is breached
Or otherwise defeated

Time crumbles their mortar
Context shifts their efficacy
Or a new technology
Renders them impotent

Night fell
On the last ride
At the end of the trail
On those uprooted
Murdered
Stripped of identity

An image a white man made
Which earned white man’s awards
In a museum of white man ways
A monument to a way that was

There are thousands of miles of beach
Where no parasols are erected
To shade blankets
Coolers
And the sunburned

I want to be washed pure
The way a rocky shoreline
Chases all the blue from the ocean
Leaving a roiling, effervescent whiteness