penumbra gathered at the edge of evening,
that quiet border where outlines loosen
and the world seems to reconsider itself.
I walked through it without urgency,
letting the muted light imbue each surface~
a fencepost, a drifting leaf, my own breath~
the dimness offering a wisdom untouched by light.
a quiet drift of air brushed the understory
as if uncapping a bottle of elixir
mixed from resin, cool bark, and the faint
metallic scent of approaching night.
nothing reached out for meaning~
yet the moment felt quietly inhabited,
as if presence itself were enough.
In luxuriant jade landscape
of verdant sprouts
glorious golden understory
copiously unveiled,
stemmed by swerving
emerald blades,
entwining the pairs
of petrified legs,
rooted in sensual soil of sanguinity,
the potent promise
morphed as the maze
of floral fresco.
The black upright figure
of deviant distinction,
a towering protector
in sutured closeness,
fused with the feminine flair,
camouflaged to confuse
the invidious predator.
Bare trees aligned geometric
in harmonized motif,
outline the florid boulevard
for the beguiled footsteps
walking away enticed
from the onyx horizon
to the sunburst meadow
where the dulcet dawn waits
with desire epitomized.
Inspired by Undergrowth With Two Figures by Van Gogh
In luxuriant jade landscape
of verdant sprouts,
opulent golden understory
copiously unveiled,
stemmed by swerving
emerald blades,
entwining the pairs
of petrified legs
rooted in soil of sanguinity,
the potent promise
morphed as the maze
of floral profusion.
The black figure upright
of deviant prominence,
a towering protector
in sutured closeness,
fused with feminine flair,
camouflaged to confuse
invidious predator.
Bare trees aligned geometric
in harmonized motif,
outline the florid boulevard
for beguiled footsteps
walking away enticed
from the onyx horizon
to the sunburst meadow
where the dulcet dawn waits
with desire epitomized.
Inspired by Undergrowth With Two Figures by Van Gogh
In luxuriant terrane of verdant sprouts
opulent golden understory unveiled,
stemmed by swerving jade blades,
entwining the pairs of legs petrified
within the maze of floral profusion.
The black figure of deviant prominence
stands out like a towering protector
in sutured closeness fused with her,
camouflaged to evade the predator.
Bare trees aligned in harmonized motif,
outline the floral boulevard for them
to walk away from the onyx horizon
to the sunburst meadow ahead.
This intricacy, this forest
fanfare of green life, flower
and fungi, the creatures
that crawl its damp understory
of bush and fern, and above,
the wing born marvel
of those masters of the air -
cause the mind to pause
with wonder as when under
the high ceiling of a cathedral.
Here too is something made
to hold what seems holy,
an ideal blest by a notion
of some unspoiled thing.
And here too are hymns
composed out of an innate
desire to praise by being true,
bug, bird or towering tree
all sharing in the presence
of that unfathomable mystery.
The road cut through
a deep gully of trees that
stood tall, 300 ft. or more,
and let no sunlight
fall except a dark, filtered
shade, never drying the damp
dripped down from a thick,
canopy of leaves.
Ferns grew in the spaces
between trees and smothered
the understory in a green
sway of fronds and dank smells
of forrest rot and gave home
to armies of creatures
with unpronounceable names
who's features were hammered
out in the factories
of horror.
The shoulder was too narrow
for a traveler to stop
and take in a view
and on one side
a drop deep enough to swallow
a car and so drove haste
and a pressing unease
to quickly pass through
this gullet of the prehistoric
and into the clear
careful not to wake
what was sleeping there
in the caves of human fear.
In neat formations
rhododendrons guard
the half acre order
of our mountain block
and rush their unreal colour
into a landscape just emerging
from winter's cold.
They seem out of place
in the green - brown encirclements
of native bush where beneath
towering eucalypts
only an odd acacia accents
the understory shade
in tiny globules
of palest yellow.
Soon summer will bleach colour
from a drying world.
Borders will wilt
as the bush draws closer.
Here, coiled
in the shadows of long days,
life sinks
to a shallow pant.
An uneasy quiet
is menaced by siren wails
and heat.
Spring is sprung.
Clouds of maple.
Skies of pine.
Red in green.
Serviceberry understory.
Spring is sprung.
Skunk cabbage spathe.
Black birch sap.
Poplar flowers.
Opossum tires.
Spring is sprung.
Blackbird wing.
Wasps won’t sting.
My father died.
Town meeting Monday.
Spring is sprung.
Sing cuccu!
There’s no down side.
Infinite willow.
Leaning oak.
Spring is sprung.
Budding flame.
Budding thumb.
Cat claw.
Bird yolk.
Spring is sprung.
Dandelion
Shoots. Arrowhead
Roots. Waterproof
Boots. Old bed young.
Spring is sprung.
Ring and wrong.
Thank and thought.
Seed and sawn.
Wait and walk.
Spring is sprung.
Ridden Hard, Put Up Wet
Worn down landscape
Ridden hard and put up wet over eons of time.
Buttes interspersed with ravines and wadis,
Vast irregular symmetry.
Clumps of purple blue green sage
To have been seen by the riders of olden times.
Clusters scattered randomly.
A patchwork without design
Covering endlessly to the horizon
Intermingled with beef and horse.
The buttes come in irregular waves of shapes and sizes.
Conical breasts sprung up in ridges,
Or sometimes alone at the sky line.
Isolated flat tops
Or long Capetown table mountains;
African ant hill shapes,
Crenulated with skirts of vertical old rivulet stripes.
The overstory of bare hard scrabble thin land
Draped to the side of the ravines
Exposing the layers of understory limestone below.
Sentinel wood line posts, strong with wire, guard the narrow highway
That rolls with the landscape.
Occasional cotton wood ribbons
Crosses the roadway over the sign ‘Dry Run Creek’ which still remains dry until the rain comes.
All this
Served under the banner of blue sky
Shredded with a mare’s tail wisp of clouds
7/13/2020
No healthy humane man
of mature integrity
is a disenchanted island.
No individual is entirely orphaned.
Even an island has an associated understory,
below water's surfing surface
lie deeply rooted
anciently fertile connections.
And above water's surface
birds migrate outdoor voices
and digestive tracts
and trends
visit,
co-invest regenerativity
of ocean tides
and wind storms.
Those who celebrate only their autonomous island-ness,
are those who do not actively include
how we already live as multicultural peninsulas
leading back to mainland ancient healthy multicultures
and leading forward
to where we can once again
applaud diversely landscaped roots
fertile soil and soul migrations
visitors of nutritiously remembering curiosity
co-invested leaders in courageous fertile multi-solidarity
on this one planet island
Earth revolving within an interdependent sanctuary orbit
of synergetic understory,
Milky Way of warm wet soiled and souled
enchanting
surfing maternal womb memories
of ocean tides
as wind storms.
Underground rivers unsettle thoughts,
feelings on stable ground.
Real estate doesn't sound as real
with thoughts of hyporheic flow
beneath our feet,
out of sight and sound.
Rivers are meant to have light on top,
transparency.
Underground flow must look more like a furtive capillary
than an upfront tributary,
bringing salvific moisture
down into and across and through
deep ecological roots of fertility.
Hypostatic unions
are contrasts between understory backgrounds
emerging into focal foreground,
like darkness of night's flowing complexities
from which light emerges each day
then fades again,
like Yang creation stories
emerging from Yin
hypostatic partnering,
hyporheic flow
deep down within ecological consciousness,
subterranean channels
feeding timeless roots
of healthy real estates,
cooperative becoming.
"God punishes us for what we can't imagine."
Stephen King
What we can't imagine
is what we won't imagine
for lack of polypathic priority,
for too much fullness of rotting exegetical Promise.
What I won't imagine
becomes what I would never choose to invest in,
to nurture,
both filled with fear
of self-emptying prophecy
and overflowing with love
for Earth's other-fulfilling potentiality;
robust
resilient with or without us
regenerate
opposite of delineating pathology
through superego's anthro-absence.
We evolve healthy wealth becomings
truncated by static nonverbal then verbal ...isms,
unimaginably ebbing and flowing
what we have not yet hypostatically imagined dynamic,
ergodically patterned,
bionically rhythmed
creolically rocked
and matriarchal understory schism-rolled
rewards of and for Earth's echo imagining bicamerality,
sacred nondual ecology.
God's punishment
is for what we won't imagine,
multiculturally polypathic together.
Passing through the jade
green understory of yours,
discovering your
forest-like body;
betwixt and between at last
I found my abditory.
When your voices stop
does the music stop, too?
When outside voices stop
can you hear stars sing
inside?
Does star song
deeply resonate with you
too?
When your WinLose tragic investments stop
does our WinWin comic co-opera begin
too?
When our WinWin cooperative investments flow
do your therapeutic climax outcomes
ease on down a more resiliently compassionate
Golden Rulish kinda' road?
When you step outside at night
plant yourself on Earth
look up at sparkling shared starlight,
can you hear star songs echoing inside
outside?
When I step outside at night
and the voices stop
I can hear their resonating understory,
variations on time's revolving EarthSound.
Can you hear more clearly
what has become us all along
too?
Star song memories
in dancing liturgical light
singing out preemptive resonance,
step one
and hopeful two.
Who are we
in ego's deductive dark winter
decomposing fallen embryos
nurturing healthcare?
Who are we
springtime consumers of inductive light
and dark wet nights
nourishing ecstatically growing life systems?
Who are we
in diastatic summer's full regeneration,
bright light warm absorbing flows
of water's baptismal promise?
risk,
opportunity
for future replenishment?
Who are we
producing fall's winnowed harvests
branching
flowing
flying scattered seeds of time's intense dense integrity?
Advent of four-prime spiral seasons,
light's empowerment
balancing heart-root rhythmic systems
flowing Earth's nurturing river
of rich polycultural
polypathic
polymorphic becoming
Understory for Earth's Ground of Being,
RNA soil languaging DNA soul regenerators,
revolutions enfolding evolution's bilateral Tao way.
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