Storm brewing over the hogbacks: Photo by Noelle
As the sun set, it was clear, the beauty was in the clouds, the high winds, and the violence between. They gave the sun something to shine upon, and in that, was the miracle at dusk. This is the path of healing. You are whole again when you can shine the light of your spirit on that which was broken, violent and torn asunder.
In the Land of Algae grows dragonfly larvae and tadpole eggs. A curious place of varied greens and swirling motes that build grasshopper an island. In the Land of Algae is the home of the skating water bug, fat belly and spindly legs, skipping over oxygen bubbles and landing in dark mud, seeping from delicious decay. In the Land of Algae is a planet unknown, as Mars and Jupiter, but so much closer to home.
It seeps and bubbles with oxygen and fermenting life from last season and rot… oh there is definitely rot. Dead leaves, sticks, bugs, old fish. It is a soup of color and life that smells earthy and pungent. I watch a water bug crawl across its surface. I cannot tell if it searches for food or is its food. Mosquitos swarm above me, but I tell them I’m busy. They’ll have to dine elsewhere. Most listen, anyway. I love ponds, streams and strange pools of water that life springs out of; moist, hot and teaming with all manner of crawling and swimming things. Sometimes they’re creepy and beautiful, other times decayed and rich.
I grew up on a lake in a neighborhood of mostly boys. I had five brothers. I caught toads and snatched up frogs with a stealth a stork would envy. Salamanders and crawfish were my favorite, but they’re tricky. Not easy to find in fresh water streams and under rocks. I never killed anything. I just liked to catch them and look at their beauty. Flying crickets, Daddy Long Legs, praying mantises, rolly pollies and aphids. Furry night moths, lightning bugs, and long earth worms. Tadpoles, sunnies and catfish. Pike, sometimes, snappers often and boxed turtles on occasion. Once a copperhead snake swam alongside me on the lake and scared me half to death. Their bite is most unpleasant. Smores by the campfire invited a troupe of ants to visit my sleeping bag one night. I have never screamed so loud in all my life.
I spent a lot of time alone as a child. I was often lonely, but never bored. My capacity for make-believe had me in trouble for daydreaming, over the course of my school years, more often than I can count. I enticed a chipmunk into my lap with nothing but my hands, once, and then spun a story of a monk village guarded by dragon and damselflies. I regaled my furry friend with my story, but it only slept. Little heartbeat beating like wild horses in its breast. I couldn’t understand why I never quite fit in anywhere and in my early years thought of my younger self always the odd man out. Or, in this case, odd girl out.
I stare into the percolating algae that festers with life and imagine the gnats and mosquitos are angels that follow me everywhere I go. I am the princess of a swamp and they are my guardians. What is there to do? Bugs and birds may swarm, but never princesses. They always seem to travel alone.
Coming of night over Johnston Lake: Photo by Noelle
In the coming of night I feel the day slip away. In the last rays that crest the hill, I forget what disturbed my midday and nagged my afternoon. No monk am I, but there is a vesper in my heart at this hour. As if the monastery bell had rung and in the reeds of the lake I knelt. Swallows catch the last flies, before the chill descends with the night. I ache to follow the rays across the horizon, yet, there is peace in this twilight I fear to miss. The passing of my day, its light and its dark, not to be walked again.
Dead Tree at Chatfield Reservoir: photo by Noelle
In grain an old storyteller’s life twists and turns. Withered like drift wood that never left home. Each adventure a ring and a knot. An audience of millipeds and the rolly polly beetle that roam the planks and hone the staff. Sun demands payment in chlorophyll and sap, while wind licks it’s length a child on a lollipop. There is no rest from seed to mulch, for even in death the performance plays on, a tale told in wood.
Dead tree on the bank of the South Platte River: Photo by Noelle
And the trunk said “I am alone here. My branches are dead and gone. My many roots are withered or taken by beetles. My leaves have blown far in the wind. No life moves in my bark, accept that which feeds upon me.”
And the earth said, “Come to me. For you have fed me with your leaves and opened me with your roots. You have held me to this bank, for surely the rain would have sent me to the river. Be at peace, my old friend and sink into my soil. Tell me of your years in the sun. For that story given, I will trade of how water rises to the moon.”
Stone at Roxborough: Photo by Noelle
Veins run deep. Pockets of distortion, pits and sticks. A landscape cracked and disturbed, stained and bleached from the sun. Colors soft, contrast drifting into shade. Solid, firm, reliable as an East wind. In stone a story I hear with my fingers.
Stone and Sky: Photo by Noelle
Stone and tree
Earth and sky
Balance
Red rock erosion: Photo by Noelle
Crumbled
Water first,
Then wind erodes
My surfaces, going
Flecked off or tumbled down
As sand piles slowly at my feet
Free Bing Photos
The dark water, the sky splitting open. Lightening spiking the blood. Such drama to no witness, but myself. All such storms are spent alone anyway. Hugs are offered. Drinks at the pub, but in the end you are alone and the wind whips up your thoughts into gale forces. A fever’s pitch, knocking shuttered eyes that seems to accent the steady ticking of the wall clock in this silent house of darkness. A mourner’s tomb. A sarcophagus of dried up memories.
I’m as dead as the blind mole brought in by the cat, and yet rage percolates below the surface waiting on my sorrow to sleep. The numbness in between feels like an isolated island in a forgotten river. I hunger for my anger, but I am as a thirsty man who sees the oasis, but worries it’s a mirage, thus his legs will not carry him closer.
Is not fire the sign of life still pulsating in the very veins of my loss? The still standing tree left intact after the path of the tornado. The longing to climb into the grave is held back by the very racking sobs that make me want to climb in. The pulse beats to the tree limb banging the gutter. Death haunts the eaves, while life pumps the generator that flicks on the light in the empty kitchen. Dark windows streaked with rain that hide the streams of my face nicely. One cup, not two, but the coffee tastes the same. Oddly, that is what comforts. The familiarity that still lives, waiting on you, as if the dirge never played.
"Nothing Exceeds Like Superfluous Jejunity "
Stories and Musings on Modern Life
Explorations in Authenticity by Michael Mark
Myths, legends, folklore and tales from around the world
❈ Silvia Ganora Photography ❈
Free to Be!
Usually Poetry
5-7-5 syllabic haiku in the english language
Love
Intertwined passions ~
Design, Make, Pray, Repeat
Auf einmal ist alles relativ
Just my various random & miscellaneous stuff...
Expanding Fully in this moment, understanding ourselves deeply, finding happiness
Meditation Travelogue 
You must be logged in to post a comment.