Here I stand,
hot breath in hand,
deserted beneath a sandstone arch
carved out of the very badlands of hell.
Shade is the place of my rest and remorse
of a people not as seeming as me.
A two turtle dove sky
lends new light to my eye
as the heat keeps a pounding in waves.
The telltale signs of the sleekest jet
have no place in the face of the sun.
“My shame,” as one old Indian put it,
“covers the face of the earth.”
Cactus is no thorn in my side;
the dotted green runs from canyon to bluff
breaking up the subtle monotony of browns.
Layered bedrock shelves fossils in the company of eons,
a history of worlds at your feet.
Waiting for a puffball to block the sun,
the blue is now too bright for right thinking;
a grasshopper here, a horsefly there,
today is the day the angels come.
Lizard, snake, centipede, ant,
how can you say the place is vacant of life
when you know, time out of mind,
you would make yourself a space for your own burial
by the mere thought of an I-me-me-mine?
Those that see into the grave cannot see beyond it.
But soft, dusk is the approach of sky
and man and his man-made madhouse,
yet the difference lies in the lighting of night
between a twilight sound and the blank of a dulled stare.
I give you in picture what I cannot relate in experience
of a time and a mood and their many moons.
In the whole of space,
not an angle can trace
any such thing as blackness
as light in some measure or kind
in every quarter makes itself known,
except, perhaps,
in the back of men’s minds
as nothing more than fear of the unknown...
Turn out the porch light,
out with the street light,
forget the night light
and sing, cricket, sing.
____
addison is here today, gone tomorrow.
____
addison is here today, gone tomorrow.
