Breath softens where rock meets sky. Where the clouds become generous prompts for an acceptance of impermanence.
Temperate air on skin and the sun’s plenty, can illicit a slight dissipation of loneliness.
Crevices and small plateaus in which one may rest can leave a feeling or particular fondness for the soul who discovered a favored spot.
Of course in my dusty country there are prickly things to be reckoned with. There are unforgiving spores that can be invisibly carried on the wind and end a life of one form or another.
I like it best when the only sounds are that of the wind or birds or insects. Water is like a golden pleasure for an auditory attunement. However the distant cars or planes are still more poetic than the cacophony within. And sometimes I hear the children in my life.
In these natural spaces I can understand these young ones are a part of my life, and I theirs. Often I separate us all.
Separation like a darkness. Knowing of light outside, and something, everything that is more coherent than fear is a curiosity.
Significance of this sort is not a thruway to freedom. Deep breaths in fresh spaces and the dancing of Sagebrush and Palo Verde are an interruption.
Imagination of nine and ten year old boys, brothers by introduction and fate, bring a tender laughter. A sound, a movement that came from somewhere inside of me.
The intricacies of a Saguaro with her accordion like ribs and the place where spines connect to body have capacity to stun their looker to a reverential pause. Each spike and facet, attachment and decay without a single apology. She has a universe interwoven with flora, and boulders and a desert moss.
Interdependence. Here it is understood. Here, the now that may always be where Heaven meets Earth and all of her life. Here, where there is an impossibility to return. Here, as the child says, “on the top of the world”.
It is only here that an embrace of what was becomes perceivable. At the top of the world where there is a cutting through of that which is no longer essential, never was, I stand tall.