photo by Neil Van Patten

Pristine mountains, primeval sea of freshwonder
Embrace me now, where once –
(Never mind that now; begin again.)

Loons sigh in the distance, and
An osprey dances for his food
On a finger of fair sky
The color of blueberry popsicles,
The kind that made your tongue and teeth turn
Blue so that your mother didn’t like you to eat them.
(Funny – thinking about blueberries makes me smell blueberries. . .)

Perhaps the smell is not a memory but rather the
Ripening of real fruit that populates my island.
Or do I smell the outhouse
That periodically belches chemicals.
(. . . and how omnipresent the unseen humans really are!)

I wish I could paint, draw, re-create this verdant vision.
Alas, imprisoned in words, I am powerless,
Can merely, only stare in awe and wonder
At the multitude of textures
In the layers of mountains.
(Who’d’ve thought – so many shades of blue and green?)

The clouds soar by, laughing at me as they play.
At times they’re great white whales
Charging through the endless oceans.
In a moment they’ll be clowns in acrobatic performance,
Gymnasts hurtling over cushioned bars.
Look – one sailing just overhead has fused
With others and has formed a mammoth hand
(Like my father’s!)

Shielding me from the fiery and persistent sun
Which acquiesces to the threatening cloud.
And in the cool shade
A deerfly returns to bite me.
(Ouch!)