Tag Archives: perspective

Discovery Distance [Free Verse]

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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.

First World Problems Are So Adorable

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How deep is it? No one knows.

How deep is it? No one knows.

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?

POEM: Twisted Time

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Six months a year
the river flows
away from the sea.
Entropy’s fall?

No.

The fits and starts
of progress are
not rooted in
twisted time.

Here,
blacksmiths exist.
The hammer bounces
on the anvil

Tap-Tap-CLANG
Tap-Tap-CLANG

Ordered repetition,
until the steel begins
to bend and twist
and flex and tear.
It tears like taffy,
taffy glowing orange.

Tap-Tap-CLANG
Tap-Tap-CLANG

What is time for
that glowing rod?
The fire makes
its molecules
race and feud.

The hammer spreads
time into an eternity

of

Tap-Tap-CLANG
Tap-Tap-CLANG

Taken in Hungary in 2008

Taken in Hungary in 2008