the world beyond the nearest tree often feels suspect.
Tag Archives: perspective
Merge [Haiku]

two common trees,
seen from a distance,
merge to an ideal.
Poet’s World [Sonnet]
I exited through my old, mundane door, and heard a melody so blissful / sweet, and saw some colors never seen before. That song, those sights, danced me down the street. A neon breeze both warmed and cooled my face. The pleasure wave that I'd once known as sin was flaring, with no feelings of disgrace, but up my spine a trill of violin. Euphoric, I ran 'til I felt lungs burn -- so fired with energy that my bones hummed -- But as I felt the wheels begin to turn, I realized the depths must remain unplumbed. Before my druthers, I had to go back. To sustain this would give me a heart attack.
The Melt [Common Meter]
Our lives are blobs that melt away. You may not sense the drips. It happens slowly; you may never hear burbled blips. You may not feel that it's lighter, or that it's lost some girth. Because you've shed it gently each and every day since birth. And when you feel the withering, will you take it as loss? A good loss like becoming lean -- a skimming of the dross? Or like a vicious theft of the best parts of one's being: like time has grabbed the valuables and taken to fleeing? The melt will continue onward until there is no more. So, think yourself experience rich though you are time poor.
Antâs Eye View [Lyric Poem]

How much grander must the world seem
closer to the ground,
a grass forest within the forest
with layered forest sounds?
Or would one be cut off from
the vaulted dome of sky,
and have oneâs world shrink to
the limits of oneâs eye?
If an ant thought it saw everything,
but only viewed a slice,
would its tiny ant mind have contracted a basic human vice?
Discovery Distance [Free Verse]
Mountains are best viewed at a distance, despite humanity's "closer is better" bias. Up close, one is invariably in a cloud, looking at an undifferentiated mass of gray-white: ice -- granite -- snow -- fog. One may climb a mountain to see other mountains in the distance, but standing eye-to-rock with a mountain offers little spectacle & grandeur. Massive things can be too close to see. I wonder whether I'm also better viewed from a distance. Not everything is. Consider the opposite mistake: People say things such as, "My Great White Whale is out there." But Great White Whales are always found looking inward -- not out in the distance.
The Over / Under on Clouds [Haiku]
Only Up [Haiku]

shaggy parasol
sits by the sidewalk,
knowing only up
POEM: Perspective
red lights glint off the rails
no trains pass by tonight
moon striped in jet contrails
I wonder who’s in flight
perched upon a boxcar
jets seem so far from here
I see a patch of stars
recall words of Shakespeare
about heaven, earth, and my philosophy
First World Problems Are So Adorable
In the interest of enhancing global understanding and camaraderie, I’ve built a translator of common first world (FW) problems–putting them in terms of their Rest of the World (RoW) equivalents.
FW: This food needs salt.
RoW: This food needs food.
FW: My health insurance premiums went up $20 per month.
RoW: My right foot, which recently turned from purple to black, just fell off.
FW: My car is in the shop again.
RoW: My right foot, which recently turned from purple to black, just fell off.
FW: It’s raining again today.
RoW: My house was washed off its foundations and is currently floating down the Brahmaputra River.
FW: Looks like those devils from the other party got a majority in the legislature.
RoW: This coup was particularly bloody.
FW: Squirrels are getting into my bird feeder.
RoW: A tiger ate my family.
FW: A traffic jam made me late for Pilates class.
RoW: While limping through the Kyber Pass to get antibiotics for my right stump, I was socked in by an unanticipated blizzard.
FW: My GPS says this road cuts under the interstate, but now I’ve got to go around.
RoW: What’s GPS?