By guest author Vol Lindsey
11/13/2019
My philosophy professor
said, “The air in ancient Greece
was so clean and clear
that people could see tiny details
of distant mountains and
this clarity of vision
translated to clarity of thought as well,
and so were born the philosophies
that have made us who we are
across all this great span of time.”
When I walked outside this morning
to look around at what
the Llano Estacado was doing,
the air, swept clean by days of strong
wind from the arctic north,
revealed a further ridgeline
than I have seen before. Trees
and towers poked into a sky
so far away across that clean
expanse that the nameless thing
inside my bones came out and
breathed great oceans of air,
it seemed for the first time...
threw out it’s arms and expanded
everywhere I could see.
The rolling plains arched its back,
to an obliging sky who lay down
between the lifted thighs of brown
ridges all the way to the horizon,
and the wind sighed.
On the highway below, trucks
growl and cars whisk by in their
artificial existence made of mindless
metal and speed, a corruption unaware
it is riding at the bottom of what was
once a great sea. A cold trickle of awe
leaks across my anger and I do not know
what to do with my absurdity,
out here where even my ancient eyes
can see the stuff of who I am
and never will be.
And there she is!
La Belle Dame Sans Merci,
lifting her light food and wild eye
searching me out, like she does not
know who I am and what I need
from her one more time.
I won’t be fooled again, I welcome
the chance to make sweet moan
in in the meadows by the lake and
burn the graceful sedge to the ground.
I’ll laugh this time in the face of a pain
I’ve known long enough that
we have also made sweet love,
kissed French style, long and deep.
before she walked away
one more time.