In awe of landscapes.
At this hour of the morning I wish I had the voice of a wild man. I wish I could open my throat and throw something jagged and primal, passionate into the sky like the casting up of the first stars; I want to sing something that timeless. I want to sing something so a part of me it shakes that same organ or feeling in the bodies of every other living thing. I want to sing like a spreading darkness at dusk, like a fog or rainfall or storm front.
Driving home tonight with Natalie from Parson's Pond, the moose coming onto the road all legs and knees, lathered in sweat and shaggy fur like prehistoric horses. Like the forest shed a clump of itself, autonomous. All the while thinking of the Steffler poem "Last Night We Were Ravenous":
"Some trees detached themselves from the shaggy / shoulder and stepped in front of the car"
"She was the ocean wearing a fur coat"
"She was our deaths come briefly forward to say hello"
"She was more a part of the forest than any tree.
She was made of trees. The beauty of her face was bred
in the kingdom of rocks"
The way even surrounded with metal and speed the heft of flesh and bone, hoof and teeth, made me a lantern full of oily fear, made me acutely aware of my immediate and minuscule finitude. How the presence of my heart in my throat pushed the utterances of love to the tip of my tongue, made me grateful for the hand on my thigh that had, with screaming brakes and black streaks pulled along the road, shot across my chest in a gesture of protection. In the grey and overcast light of twilight a boulder grew legs and sprang into the road and Natalie, "I don't suppose they look both ways before crossing" and me suddenly aware that nature need not ask safety of itself.
And earlier in the day standing in the cool shade beneath an arc of rock on the beach before Daniel's Harbour. The town where a landslide slipped a house into the St. Lawrence. Me, standing amongst the cool and smooth pebbles in the chest of limestone, the ocean creeping its finger up the beach behind me, caressing every stone, turning them in its grip like a farmer evaluating eggs. A reminder that man is unnecessary to make the implements of wonder and that wonder in itself is a reaction, after the fact of nature. Me left with the feeling that wonder is man's primary function.
The tuckamore of the bog, the windswept trees and their skeletons left bare by fire, serve to accent the immensity of the mountains, the glacially carved fjords and ponds. The split in the rock grown over with green where God once split the land with an axe. The rock and brush the colour of the moose's coat I would later brush against on the road; the car moving along this landscape like an insect in that pelt. And I, a passenger, amazed.
Driving home tonight with Natalie from Parson's Pond, the moose coming onto the road all legs and knees, lathered in sweat and shaggy fur like prehistoric horses. Like the forest shed a clump of itself, autonomous. All the while thinking of the Steffler poem "Last Night We Were Ravenous":
"Some trees detached themselves from the shaggy / shoulder and stepped in front of the car"
"She was the ocean wearing a fur coat"
"She was our deaths come briefly forward to say hello"
"She was more a part of the forest than any tree.
She was made of trees. The beauty of her face was bred
in the kingdom of rocks"
The way even surrounded with metal and speed the heft of flesh and bone, hoof and teeth, made me a lantern full of oily fear, made me acutely aware of my immediate and minuscule finitude. How the presence of my heart in my throat pushed the utterances of love to the tip of my tongue, made me grateful for the hand on my thigh that had, with screaming brakes and black streaks pulled along the road, shot across my chest in a gesture of protection. In the grey and overcast light of twilight a boulder grew legs and sprang into the road and Natalie, "I don't suppose they look both ways before crossing" and me suddenly aware that nature need not ask safety of itself.
And earlier in the day standing in the cool shade beneath an arc of rock on the beach before Daniel's Harbour. The town where a landslide slipped a house into the St. Lawrence. Me, standing amongst the cool and smooth pebbles in the chest of limestone, the ocean creeping its finger up the beach behind me, caressing every stone, turning them in its grip like a farmer evaluating eggs. A reminder that man is unnecessary to make the implements of wonder and that wonder in itself is a reaction, after the fact of nature. Me left with the feeling that wonder is man's primary function.
The tuckamore of the bog, the windswept trees and their skeletons left bare by fire, serve to accent the immensity of the mountains, the glacially carved fjords and ponds. The split in the rock grown over with green where God once split the land with an axe. The rock and brush the colour of the moose's coat I would later brush against on the road; the car moving along this landscape like an insect in that pelt. And I, a passenger, amazed.