once
you get out...farther on out into this land
...roads lose their provisional character...
turning to endless trajectories seemingly ungoverned
by the slight folds
surviving amidst the landscape...after aeons of erosion
have done their work
still, rather than freeing
our routes from this earth, it feels,
instead, as if some deeper relation remains - to abiding
forms
beneath the crust, or below...within the
slow mantle itself
There are only two speeds here...
for we may fly above, at whatever height,
turning what is into endless mosaics of subtle variation
or, we can cease...dwelling instead upon
the shape of a bone, one stone's texture...or, the gnarled
essence
of every plant that makes this place a home.
together
or, rather, juxtaposed,
to hint at the greater whole - they speak
of how time erodes those transients we so easily mistake
for individuality
leaving only the bare shape of same, exposed
in unforgiving climate
In this tale,
our roads - recent creations largely unrelated
to the paths of past walkers - take on the feel of time
itself,
unswerved by our lives, shaped only by the imperative
of change itself...and so, impervious
to lesser things
but, down
upon the ground, life
is all around us...even if we must learn
anew our feelings for this struggling thing, parched
to its core, with a bleached greenness so alien to
more frequently watered eyes.
as, here...amidst
the endless sameness of this near-desert land,
beauty unfolds...the mosaic now poised in stillness
- unlike its onflowing
counterpart, the road - whilst a heat haze shimmers
over, but...you must bend to see the sights
Stones here are like bones,
gnawed by time - each mutely expressive of the forces
that birthed & smoothed it
into the thing you see before you. This is the beauty
of deep time,
and the life around bows to it...unable,
in this dry land, to reshape the world in its image.
what lives, instead,
is that which finds itself amidst the stones,
taking on some of their strength ameantimes...and flowering
in astounding
profusion - once the rains came - but otherwise holding
fast to life
with a tenacity which shames...
you may read the story of these lives,
in their knotted stems...like branches from some forgotten
world, bearing within
the myriad rings of their years
&
yet above, and again, we fly
time's arrow/mosaic turned to movement, but - held -
as
some isolated rock halts our flight
still, having looked down, we
may merely see this as one larger sign
of what is all around, as
- in this land -
all stones stand
John Henry Calvinist
