Hedgehog cacti on Green Mountain: Photo by Noelle
The further on my path I travel, the more captivated I am with the patterns that appear in the mist. There is a sacredness to everything from leaf to the milking of cows.
“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.” Pythagoras
The reading room: Photo by Noelle
The sliver of window holds the field and the wood beyond. My eye catches the green as I peruse the book. In the cold and rain I shall not venture further, yet I feel muddy grass beneath my feet. In the quiet of the house, there lacks the tapping of rain drops swapping leaves, as they roll ever downward to the earth. Pages turning and ticking clock are a paltry company by comparison to the flooding ravines. Fiddlehead ferns breaking mulch dance about my mind interrupting this tale of woes and dragons, forgotten in my lap. For the confinement of dry and warm blankets I gave up the wind rushing my face and rattling my jacket sleeves. Such adventures of wet crows and dark fox burrows have I missed in this warm and dry corner of my house.
Bear Creek Lake, Lakewood, Colorado: Photo by Noelle
The trail is long as a river in the grass. Sand lilies grace the trail dwarfed now and then by soapweed yucca. In this vastness, the short and tall grasses each belong to me, as surely as the wild sky. Storm clouds gloom, but the rainbow only laughs. The sun has broken through and crickets sun themselves on drying stones. They snap and sing, flying just ahead of me into the sagewort and buffalo grass. I hear the mountain plover and the meadowlark close and far, but they are nothing more than flickers in my peripheral vision. So much moves in this rolling prairie, but always sees me before I see it. Still, I do not hunger for company in such a crowd of scrappy rabbits and field mice. If I keep my pace, I may find the pot of gold before the light winks night.
Walking bridge at Clement Park: Photo by Noelle
Not everyone at the edge is leaping towards death. They aren’t all desperately escaping grief and depression. Some of us come to the edge to see who we are in the air. Then the water. The chance to leap, a joy hungered for. For surely, there is exhilaration in risking everything to become who you truly are. In the quiet corners of our lives we daydream of how water transforms.
By the Road: Photo by Noelle
By The Wire: Photo by Noelle
Long day and too much traffic. Coming home and I saw you by the wire and something told me to pull over. You were still and quiet, while the interstate roared on. I stood with you alone and together. I wonder what you thought of me, coming from no where or why you didn’t wander off. My mind was awash with details, suddenly wiped clean on your withers and dried in your mane. It’s weird what makes you think of peace and angels. This silent stillness, chest high in barbed wire and switch grass mixed with short blue grama. I stayed awhile and smelled your hide. Earth tones that cleansed my eyes of fluorescents. When I left you I was naked once again and on your bare back my heart road home.
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.
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.”
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
"Nothing Exceeds Like Superfluous Jejunity "
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