.
The campfire flickered.
They all sat watching
And picking at lice
And staring in the dark.
One ventured, plaintive:
A wondering nightsong.
Time doesn't exist
It's going by
It doesn't exist
I don't know why
It's running out --
It doesn't exist.
To the east, a pearly
Light was breaking
Against the planar arms
Of the trees beyond the clearing.
Once more it was going by.
No vote was taken.
Campfire, closeup: photo by J. smith, 2008
White campfire: photo by Crash Underride, 2007
Am Lagerfeuer: photo by Roger Rössing, 1952 (Deutsche Fotothek)
White campfire: photo by Crash Underride, 2007
Am Lagerfeuer: photo by Roger Rössing, 1952 (Deutsche Fotothek)
7 comments:
Tom,
Good to know that back in the olden days, pre-partisan politic, votes weren't always taken. . . . O times, O men!
5.14
grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, motionless green leaves in right
foreground, no sound of wave in channel
“exact” possibility reflect,
matched by an unusual
picture anticipation, about
to inhabit it, action
grey-white of sky reflected in channel,
cormorant flapping across toward point
Steve,
Unusual/picture anticipation
for sure...
The hidden history of this strange little nonsequitur of a post began with middle of the night considerations in the dark re. an imagined symposium on the passing of time, conducted by a group of apes who then morphed into neanderthals who were then transmuted into Germanic youth scouts...
Various permutations along the way (everything but the marshmallows), politics and persimmons floated and jettisoned, jetsams and flotsams of the historical receding into the nooks and crannies of the Dasein...
Oh, you know.
Or then again maybe not.
Thank gods for that flapping cormorant, anyway. Reality cheque drawn on the Great Sea & Sky Bank (about/to inhabit it, action...).
just beauuuuuuuuutiful!
The size, positioning and contrast (color vs. black & white and other) of the three photographs surrounding the words impart a lot of power to the work, which buoyed me through an intense day at my desk writing something quite different than poetry.
Hb, Curtis,
Many thanks.
The mesmerizing quality of firelight seems to have something of the supernatural in it, at times.
(With those lower images, though I wasn't thinking of this consciously in selecting them, it later occurred to me that what may have been in the back of my mind was a bonfire scene in Haneke's The White Ribbon, a very powerful, disturbing and haunting film about the generation of children who would "grow up" to become Hitler Youth.)
Yes, jetsams and flotsams of the historical receding into the nooks and crannies of the Dasein" -- I know, or think I do. . . . (Day 18 of workers in the 44 acre field cutting (chainsaws) all the all the habitat (coyote brush, broom. brambles) of quail, birds, deer, foxes, tractor piling it up in a now dried heap in preparation for --- and this is 'progress'?
Steve, that's terrible.
Puts me in mind of the day some progressives set fire to a "wild" field next door to us at the little travelled dirt intersection of Nymph and Cherry. 'Twas a patch of rank weedy "brush" aka poison oak. A brisk northwest wind off Agate Beach blew the poison smoke straight at us. Gales of coughing for weeks.
"Over here" it's one endless infernal chainsaw orchestra forever. E'en in the continual subarctic cold.
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