Taken for Granite

Whereby

a  storm comes ambling aloft

which builds upon itself and

You are there to 

Witness the change

in atmosphere

Almost a reconsideration of

Truth, as it pours down 

Over body and soul.

One becomes

Baffled by the way

Sound carries or

Falls

depending upon

the time of day or night while

those spinning hours

make a hum under

Thoughts that echo

Passing through

this chambered grey space. 

We are 

Well,

enveloped 

under this veil

Trapped in body and mind

the heartbeat is 

Small comfort

Persistent as gravity

the weight we hold

Ourselves

up against wind and wave

Enduring the 

Resilience

Even while

strewn about

We become

overflowing, dispersing

Violently sometimes

Breaking down into bits, drops and 

Grains-

Eroding to dust

before settling

Eventually

becoming a mountain

Once again. 

Painting by Marianne North (1830-1890) - View near Tijuca, Brazil, Granite Boulders in the Foreground - MN821 - Marianne North Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Montaña

I have never seen
a mountain
I did not like
until now.

I had never before seen
a mountain
you could fall in love with
whose body hovered over yours
like an angel, whose shape outlined
the carnal tone
and muster its mass
against the sky with ease.

I found myself
at the base.
Cowering in the shadows,
meeting the mountain
I thought I had been dwelling atop
for the first time
seeing level
as plain as today. 





Photograph credit: Ansel Adams [Public domain], Glacier National Park Montana c. 1941-42 via Wikimedia Commons.

Mann kind

“The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person’s dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man’s ability to experience time-dreams, that is, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoker puts it, the intoxicated user’s brain seems “to have had something removed, like the mainspring from a watch.”

-Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)

Should I have sweat through those provocative dreams

Since time is running out

And shall I have watched, disturbed and overcome with infatuation,

Pleasure, intent on the scene, all its folded lines hung out,

The mosaic scene, the spackled tiles of moments to keep

Float over the surface of settled matters.

Transience penetrates us to move on and on.

This minuscule thought that writhes its way under

Eyelids-between us, selves. We are

Something small, private, intrusive, edgy and loose.

The Splinter severed from the smooth grain

Pierces its way deeper into our softness, 
past the seventh gate, writhing in quicksand

Only to break off the relationship,

Leaving a white fleshy hole with dead skin
light floods inside singing delicate motors

Before it can draw an arc, or a

furrow atop the brow with vapor and sweat
and feel the tickle from

blood running down wrists and pouring out nostrils.

Resilience needs rest and a sense, a little air and darkness,
solitude in a moment to hold on despite the vertiginous spin
We are in this together, that you remember 

That this horrific nightmare

Has occurred to me before, many times, before

I woke. 



Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, 'Pushkin at Ai-Petri during sunrise' 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.