Reverence and Awe

Laced in varying sketches of disdain and doubt

This brooding, disheveled sky

Forecasts the demeanor of the moment

Preparing to herald the encroaching fury

Suspected to be a horizon away

Over the dividing line between my horizon and yours

Within are patches of light promising eventual calm

Its power measured in the bending posture of the distant evergreens

We revel in these moments finding renewed security in the promised aftermath

Behind, another and another, these clones of nature

Repeating the steps of what came before erasing the recess between

Each seething, venting, moving on along its destined path

And we stand in silence, looking on in reverence and awe

October 12, 2023

I'm fascinated with the seemingly endless cycle of storms that often blow through here in western Oregon in the spring and autumn. Storm moves in, vents with wind and rain for 15-30 minutes, moves on, the sun comes out, a rainbow appears, all is calm .... but not for long. There's always another storm approaching.

This is not a stormy sky. It was actually taken at the height of regional wildfire season

The Realization

Occasionally, in the blind slivers of silence, when you ultimately come to mind, the realization that your existence in this tiny corner of time and place, becomes an overflowing measure of how absolutely fortunate one was, to be present in the moment, to be a small part of, to observe the beauty and passion, to know the power of your brazen soul. If I could know the depth of your raging heartbeat, if I could fully experience its lack of boundaries, if I could touch its unifying force, how much more enriched and greater my days would have been and just perhaps, the myth, the whispered rumors of pure and blatant, inexhaustible joy would be realized.

September/October 2023

A fictional thought ...... or is it?