TAKING IN THE MISE EN SCENE (ENLIGHTENMENT BY THE TERRA COTTA PARAPETS)

The world there looks vast and empty. It’s the rural earth and the loams go on inexplicably towards the end of the sightlines. You can drive and drive and without a keen eye, a soul might say, - what is there to it (keyboard broken and question mark does not work- but the work must go on!). And there, if the vehicle or the foot slows, slows, and a certain languidness, a good one, - is left to wash over the mind and body and especially the eye- then much can be seen. Now- whether it is liked or not, - that is up to each individual- there are no guarantees regarding that. Certainly the ambitious, secular, worldly set would not care and even be prone to scornful attitudes and outlooks. A half-creative or sensitive soul might have some sympathy and think or say, - Yes, that is neat. 

 

But we here are all in. That means we have to find the secret angel inside of the old wooden

benches, and the deva and sprite by the plant and water fountain. We have to look and think and be, - next to the old garden wall. We are looking for satori, and it has found us, - up by a cemetery knoll overgrown with odd feral growth and yesterday and yester-years death! (The explanation point key still works). In short, by the odd rural railway ties, - eaten by the sun and army ants, - or by the windmill on the horizon line, - we are waiting for something and seeking it out at the same time. Can we wrest a poem from some old dirt and a coy moth (question mark). Will, as Joseph Campbell said, - the Gods take ten steps towards us if we venture to take one step in their direction (question mark).

There are, between two paradigms, - a chasm wider than oceans. `That is neat,`just won`t do.We are looking for enlightenment with a large E by the terra cotta parapet that you walk past on your way to something else. 

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A NEW DAY

It was time to take the long one-lane highway and see what was in the old stomping grounds. Those are the fields, - surrounded by forests to one side and at the end, - and half way through the other- and also a farmer`s field- rich, textured, deeply green and wide and long as if in a dream. The clouds were moody, - and against logic and rationale, silently loquacious. They moved about and around,- rambling and shambling their darkness saying there is a storm here, now there, now not here and not there, but over that way- North- South- NNE, SSW, et cetera. For this reason we went, for this very reason- into the ominous afternoon. Chances are you won`t finds the rain, - it moves about like the fifth dream of the night- slippery, vague, mercurial…

Soon we were going into the field and the train whistle sounded far behind, - about a

half-kilometre. This day, - the other way- there were oddly enough not the reports of guns

from the range. After the train- nothing. Just the silent paths. Some water seemed to splash on the sides of us- just like the sea, like the ocean, like the lake- though there is no body of water there- not really even anything that could do that anyhow. It was the rain coming from North. Large drops. But soft. We kept on. It’s good to feel a little rain sometimes. The place was vacant- the flowers somehow at attention when they should have been wilted for the heaviness of the water that had splashed though there during the night and even hours before.

A helicopter came from the left, - just like in a movie, - and made its way over the field and then disappeared in the sky behind the tree line in far front. Then just us again. The world and its sounds, numbers, nuisances, noises, petty problems, - all of it- gone behind. It was like being on a good astral plane or even further. Some butterflies, many moths, a few crestfallen trees and their branches, and how tall the wild grasses had grown in a few weeks! - Up and up the ridge way the dogs go, - and look to survey the entire scope and breadth of the land. There is nobody and not a fox or coyote- the tails are up, confidence is high- allergies or spider bites and other are over. It is a new day as we watch each other, - as they run- then stop and look round. 

It is a new day as I see the drops of water waiting on the leaves of wildflowers, - or the small grasshopper, the old spider webs, - and other.

Yes. A new day. 

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STONE, SUMMIT, SHADE, SHE, AND THE SILENT SOULS DEPARTED

Quietude and the trees and knolls are knowing, relaxed. There is in this one no little house, shed with tools for the groundskeeper, or office to inquire into. These and other must be located somewhere else. A small sign that says the name- that is all that meets the front. The path is gravel, and the place is not large. Picture if you will a giant thread, - a skipping rope, cord, or craft or garden twine dropped unceremoniously down upon and about ten or twelve small summits green, and you have the roadway. It goes in this turn or that, winding sometimes in or across itself with no logic. No logic with to travel among the dead. Maybe it is fitting. Yet, there is a certain rationale among the tombstones and especially for the flowers and trees. They all sit in a way that allows the others to have the right space, air, earth, shade and or sun. 

There is a lady made of rock, and she waits near the end. Her gaze is solemn and slightly

downcast. Perhaps in her own right she is mourning and blessing the area, the departed, the whole environs physical and metaphysical. Yet, - this is easy to say. Maybe she does more. Maybe the still woman remembers the dead. Yes, - she is thinking about them. Robinson, Munroe, Smith, and Faraday. McGrath, Williamson, Foster, and the others. Going through their lives like a movie in her mind, - she sees people and places, churches and schools, she knows rivers and estuaries, quays, brooks, hillsides, factories and towns. `Still waters run deep’ and this one with her silent watchfulness and remembrance, is stiller than even the dead. Up the way is a bench, - flowers set upon it. If you look closely across the stone on the summits as you walk or drive through the cord, - you will know talismans and trinkets, little cards and photographs, - sometimes actual paper with words scribbled. But whatever say- the still lady has in her own way read them and knows of and about them. And whatever form they announce themselves in, from the flower to the necklace and all in-between, - they are all notes for the dead.

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THE VERDANT PERIMETER

There, just before the wide fields, the line of trees. They are thick with vines, leaves affixed to bases and trunks, branches of course, and with something else. They are thick with the summer heat, the late afternoon smell of near and even distant earth from loams. Thick. There, just up the way, - a worker bee, a group of ants, - and two blue jays yell and run away into the sky. In the distant view is actually a road, - but nobody can see it until a car or old truck goes past. It’s hidden. Maybe a coyote walks round those parts at night, maybe not. A big fox was seen running up the way. But the tree and the series of trees,- guarding, watching, almost testifying to all they have seen,- in silence they watch- through the February fog where it got mild and rained, during the spring that sought to birth itself into the arms of the sun. A series of autumns, - with those new smells and the dying of summers. And the summer itself- robust, green, sprawling, presenting its wildflowers, - all its flora and fauna, its natural fortitude gained though the momentum of days and nights, - its everything, - it’s self, - and open secret for all to see. 

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THE NIGHT RAINS

The dusk having receded like a wave, - the dark was left alone, languid and whole. It was as if a black ink had let loose from a pen and colored in all the sky, the contours of houses and parks, rivers and benches, strip plazas and the rest of the infrastructure. All that shone out was the orange seeming lights from low wattage bulbs in residential places. And a week shine it was, - unable to forge a beam or real large glow against the black and black new and finely wrought robust night. Then drops, large warm drops of rain. They fell haphazardly amongst the earth. Some went atop asphalt and curbing, while others accidentally kissed trees, mulberry bushes, terra cotta parapets and sleepy potted flowers of various varieties. The whole world soon seemed to begin to rain. Out there, - always out there- lightning announced itself. The distance, for seconds, - lit and one thought they could see, discern, know some figure or shape, - a metal tower, a building, even a plane. But it was not to really be, to know, - because then the light, like a house light or an idea, like a butterfly taking off or a memory, - better yet, - like a dream…simply vanished as if into the ether. And the rains then,- with more confidence, more prowess and skill- came into their own- falling, resounding, sounding, even singing some kind of song,- covered the county and all its things both living and dead all the night hours through. 

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