Tag Archives: lightning

Choices

A turmoil off in the distance,
far away and behind me,
sends intensity over his coat;
even the dew drops stand on end.

How far that gaze must travel,
the sun, the world set alight;
all the big things that begat the little,
all the little things that begat the big.

Against the dawn his silhouette remains,
captured by some concern that is not me,
while I ponder, what could it be?
in all the world, what could it be?

But the song of now plays strong.
Cold air, low clouds, joyous trees;
the both of us passive members;
in the ambience of that ensemble.

A loud break cracks behind me,
his head drops quickly to his breast.
Dew shakes loose from the antlers
like diamonds discarded to the ground.

He raises his leg slowly
as I raise my sights,
both of us anxious;
for the end that is coming.

It strikes like lightning.

Conquering Mt Katahdin

Teeth grind against time, older than heart beats;
bury themselves in the nape of the world
and through that grit they grunt back, “I dare you,”
so in droves we come to mine from them ‘truth.’

But ‘truth’ does not move through time as we do.
Desperate for relevance in our space,
we seek stability in the journey;
while what is true finds no movement worthy.

Thus those mandibles remain static
while we struggle for purchase against them;
should we win, overcoming their long face
we will have, in the end, lost the race.

The drums of victory may course in our veins
as we stand atop the corpse of impulse
to reflect on the unconquerable
hoping someday to be ponderable,

yet our triumph is too brief a passing
to reconcile against the scales of time,
like a flash of lightning through the night sky;
radiance wasted in a blink of an eye.

Photograph by David Wilson