elemental

Morgan Hill passenger


Sometimes all you got is “pretty”.   Sometimes pretty is enough.

There was a girl in town, in my very school.   I would have married her
if only I could have spoken to her.   Years later I blew up.

          For the best I suppose.

never knew what happened to her.   or her best friend.   married I suppose.
 
 
 
 
Who ever thought the world color blind, even to the very rocks themselves?
These small expressions in particular – Morgan Hill Poppy Jasper.   Named first for the one locale in the world it is found, my home town in California.
Second for the color fashion of those specific reds and yellows often combined in pattern to suggest the state’s poppy flowers.
 
 
 
 

my eyes become colors

      I hear colors with my eyes.

      does it need being said?   I am not indifferent to beauty
      wheresoever it arrives.   big colors, big skies.

      so maybe it’s not really sky I see, so much as color wanting to be big.   and sky is big, so we’re seeing and saying that.   you see?

      I love the process here, maybe more than the result itself.

we can see stories perhaps.   although not the usual kind.   these were stories first, then the words were found following along – more wily wolf than dog. there should be a name for what-kind-of-feeling-this-is.   we’re still waiting for that name to arrive.

sometimes colors come and the words don’t arrive for a long long time.
but the colors know to wait.

we need to see.   to see up close.   every stroke of color, there, every motion of your hand, they come from home and circle round home again.   there is no more open window than this.   we need to receive.   we need to be up close.

          that’s the way sky is meant to be seen.   up close.

sky is needed to host this thirsty bowl.   blues, some of them containing sun, ocher that you’d wish to embrace you coming home, mystic purple turning violet, just a little, shy earth brown eyes and reds already sliced into pinks.

listen.   sky doesn’t want being sad.   although no, none is said.   like with god,
all things allowed.   isn’t that obvious?   drink color instead.   it would be herculean not being of good heart.   take the path close at hand.

we sit by the fire of resting sun while the story discovers our world anew.

there’s water, there’s a continent, there’s a rising sun.   there’s fingers and
a hand.   there’s a crow watching everything.   there’s a fox, an albatros.

          maybe we fall in, instead of down.

          maybe color is its own gravity.

 
 
 

            please fully enlarge images for best image view

painting by Kerfe.   beautiful.   PLACEHOLDERS she called the post.   please, go see and read yourself.   presented here with kind permission.

now to be fair, this picture said to me, make me big, really big.   so I did.   many times its native birth size, I did.   a question, a desire to savor every color stroke, not to miss a thing.

second image is the California Big Sur coastline.   I adore.
 
 
 
 

the nature of air

          you are but a whisper on the lips of God.
          as a whisper, you pass on ever so soon,
          like a line of poetry written on the waters of creation.
          yet the greatness of a whisper is that it is passed on…
                    Charles P. Thorp.

wind breathes the whole world to your face

all of it, all

imagine, imagine how that is

because, because it is real, it is

all that is, a catspaw whisper on your ears

it is touching the skin of your face

it is tasting your mouth, the inside of you

it is breathing, you

Sahara blazing into space.  that forest sea-breeze cove that
no one yet has found.  that park down two blocks when you were
only this much tall.  a field of unbound wheat visible after climbing
the low hills crest.  the place where you first felt yourself alone.
stone and salt and gulls inside the wind.

your lovers kiss between the sheets.  your lover twenty years ago.
that baby you touched inside its damp eager grasp.

your mothers breath
  
  
  
neil reid
  
  
revised 2019.10.13  (inc. the former title, breathing)