The spastic flame that dances fast: too weird to match to drum. The teary eye strays into trance as if deadened by rum. Where will the flame transport us now that smoke has made us cry? Where will the cracking sounds take us as we turn to the sky? The moon is out and casts a glow, a glow of milky white. And each dim point of starlight burns trillions of times as bright as that feeble, little campfire that rules what I now feel: the heat, the smoke, the popping sounds that now make my head reel.
a web of fig roots drapes in wild tangles, & a sapling - straight & green
under the tree sits a potential Buddha; human mimics tree
a prickly pear patch stands free of bird and beast; i wonder why?
the mountain looks like a boulder, looks like a rock,...
a Rock Agama peeks over a rock, stops, and tries to be inconspicuously bright orange
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.
owl sticks its head out, staring in silent rebuke as if to say: "Hey! I'm nocturnal. What's with all the ruckus?"
A pause hangs in the air like poison gas. It threatens to devour more moments: good moments, sacred moments, moments that could've been something. It envelops all, encasing minds in psychic concrete, entombing thoughts so hushly that not even the thinker can hear them. Through the ear-ringing hours, nothing is said & nothing is heard -- not a word or a scream or unsolicited fashion advice -- nothing but the high tone that slits through silence.
the necropolis sprawls across the desert -- desolate... to us
