AMHÁIN AMHÁIN DON BHÓTHAR

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.