They carved a temple in a mountainside,
Cutting away all rock that wasn't temple,
Chipping from the top down and outside-in,
Until some domed stone segregated sky
From inner sanctum and all its idols,
And it has stood over twelve hundred years,
And it will surely stand twelve hundred more,
But someday it'll be a mountain again.
If you float that river down to the sea,
you will know long days of peaceful drifting,
but also rocks and rage, oh so bone-soaked.
You will be thrown from the craft, clinging --
trying to get back on to right your raft.
You will find yourself in an endless sea --
connected to all others.
When I see some willows - down by water's edge, drooping in the moonlight, or swaying in the breeze - I think of Blackwood's tale of Danube canoers who land upon an isle to camp among the willows. And will the willows that I see, mark wicked ground, and what will they become when darkness makes its stand? It's such a pretty tree... now all but ruined for me, and that is story's power to sweeten or to sour.
For those interested in reading the referenced story:
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood — free at Project Gutenberg
I ran into a seeker from far lands,
and asked him what he sought in my hometown.
He said he sought what's true and beautiful.
I asked him if it was here, more than his home?
"Sometimes you have to walk a thousand miles
to find that which resides beneath your nose.
To unlock truth, the tumblers must align
from the shake of experience and time."
My days are out of joint and shuffled up, and memories are pictures cast upon the floor, and rummaged through 'til chaos reigns, and I pick random recollections out of all the events ever to transpire. They seem no more my life than another's: a glance, a glimpse, a blank firing of mind, a wicked hope that truth will come to me. But all I see are monochrome mindscapes that could've been wrenched out of another mind, or made from AI's collage artistry to serve some distant master's deep wish to learn what hot-injected time does to a soul, and if shuffled scene stacks can make one whole?
This cave is too quiet -- a squeak, a drip, wing snap. But mostly silence & hushed sounds without meanings. Too quiet for my mind. Too quiet for our times.
This town has known many a name of ancient, medieval, and modern kind. It's known more slurs than names, by far, and yet this people place remains.
From a stove-heated room, the snow brightens one's mind with hope that all will be made clean, but cleanliness is next to nothingness and nothingness is next to loneliness. From inside, snow is silencing and light. It's fine and shifts like sand in desert dunes. It's silent like the depths of a cabin at midnight on the prairie before time. From outside, snow saps all of one's resolve, and makes one wish to flee the purity it pretends to generate all around. The cold, it bites like a full-body vice. The feet go numb, but brains... they fire wildly -- they shake one awake, but dare one to sleep.
The island's rocky columns rise upward. Its gray and green was tiny, but now looms. A giant jutting rock that stands on high, and shades the white sand beach and coral sea. This island will be home from now 'til doom. One's gratitude for fists of sand first swells, but it will crash in time with tedium. Could a sea death beat solitary life? One lives and dies by coconut water -- day after day - week after week, and dreams of company and comfort food, while knowing this is hell and paradise. What prison is this island - place unknown - that like Schrödinger's box shrouds life & death?
The final flower falls to the sidewalk. It's damp and deformed, -n- sugared with sand. It's gritty and pretty at the same time. The ants are crawling around and across. A faintly putrid scent must call to them. They crave that little bit of death in food. And tomorrow it'll be gone -- somehow -- gone. Who knows where: swept up, carried, or wind-blown. It will be gone, and branches will be bare.
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