Turning away, from the expanding city to flyovercountry
– yes, I see you up there, sky travelers! I see your winking stars signal
progress, east to west, west to east, toward your coastal destinations –
I've sat wedged into that same seat, rapt in airtight metal and plastic,
watched the tiny proxy plane skim graphics on the screen before me
while out the fogged windows, fuzzy smudges flow below,
fungal inflections sliding slowly behind in the darkened landscape.
I've looked down, too . . . somewhere below, where now I stand,
looking up, watching as you pass –
yes, when you make that move, expect to hear, “What are you doing here?”
Read the pattern, connect the lines – triangulate an answer.
At the trailing end of a final arc, I uproot myself from occupation
– inhabited over forty years – the last share in unchallenging retirement,
all expenses paid, base consumption and reduced usefulness –
radically transform the terms of my life, concluding function of an unsolved equation
begun – oh, decades ago, though I was unaware of calculation, off-course,
heading in retreat – landing here ('til the end? some other bearing?)
The Future rushes forward to articulate my newfound position with uttered words,
in a place still strange and unknown, outer worlds beyond my window,
beyond the country road threading this snow-covered mesa, beyond
the ghostwhite peaks, impending – compassed constellations in the clock of the sky
careering out of control towards . . . an avalanche, unraveling.
One of a certain religious disposition (which I am not) thinks of this
as the re-animationof ancient prophecy, or karmic reimbursement –
– though I have told myself tales, in times past,
of dark foreboding, I've not wandered about
to slam to a sudden heart-stopping
terminus.
No – not on the iron rail of divination but as a sum of tributaries too numerous,
large and small, gravity-made, on a mountain of opened presents heaped up in the past,
spread out before us. Track the turning points (they fall like flakes outside my window),
survey the landscape, even with the biased glass of urban eyes,
scry the general shape and flow of the watershed, its downward trend . . .
Coming of age in earth-awareness, the globe altered – a wounded stag,
assaulted by our gang of hungry predators, steadily wearing it down,
weakening and bleeding it out – could we but change: modify our diets,
mitigate our desires. We could turn away from the path of prehistoric drive.
The Old Ways fail us – but, just in time, the new will forge
a different track: to the garden we would go and the leaping stag recover.
– it has fallen many times – revived to continue running, dodging like a stream,
seeking a course invisible before it, inevitable after – still,
nothing comes to its rescue, and the untiring pack pursues.
Is it possible, I wonder, to turn the famished mob aside – invest it in some other current,
another soil, a tract someplace we once passed by?
Return to stolen lands and plant the seeds. Winter encircles us, springs to follow.
Snow melts and pools beneath the sun of a warming world, turning away.
– Los Angeles - Paonia
January 2019
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