The Long Way
Nov. 6th, 2006 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapeofthingsNot long past 4 am, time stood still for a moment. The black edifice of the city rising against burning promise of dawn while the moon lingers full and heavy, in deep communion with the mountain. A three-note call rings out again and again, above the rumble bringing the Monday commerce, and is answered from beyond the undefinable. Deu-lou-dee, deu-lou-dee, endlessly rising and falling, then the sky breathes and the day proceeds.
On Saturday the sky came down, sudden in its heaviness, and we watched in quiet worship of the water gathering, pooling up and spreading over the browning world. All day we sung the praise of the rain in our primordial rebirth; hummed with the voice and wings of thousands set free by the warm arpeggio of rain. In the morrow the air thickened, interminable until the fading memory of March.
When the morning’s cool passed into long heat I awoke and breathed and knew summer. The world thrummed and rang with the rain-brought bounty and stood changed, as it has done for eternity.
Later, along the river, water dragons bathed regally in the heady warmth, waving long-fingered hands to me as I passed. As round and round I spun on a lilac carpet of fallen blooms life slowed, redolent of salty nights heady with the scent of frangipanni dreams awaiting.
At Guyatt Park men worked in oblivion to the fecundity they were destroying. To their minds the grass necessitated cutting, because they cannot cut the rain. The loss of new life so recently surging forth was but a silly idea that followed in the wake of my passing. The play of silver gums in moonlight as the tall grass ripples is my memory alone.
Along the long flat, following the river and it bends and shines, the dusty gums hang limp in the languid air above. Corellas, raucous overhead, evoke the honey-eaters shyly watching my morning emergence, blue-spangled faces quiet in contrast. The sour note of sodden mulch reels as the river and I part prematurely. A gentle slope advances me towards a swarm of cars impatient as their late-to-class drivers.
The U and I turn our backs to each other and I face to the river with my innate infatuation with water. Up and up, chest wheezing the dirge of ascent, I climb until the water with its dreaming trees lie at my feet, before a decent to once more join it. Up and up, then a turn and the bitumen joins the buildings at my back; across the unfenced tortured greens to the river once more and the track courting its sinuous form.
Gravel crunches, king-fishers whistle; somewhere the Brahminy kites are rising on the still, heavy air and my exertion hums in tune with the universe. Hanging taut for an aeon, then a second later a swing of weight, and the river and I bow in one last farewell. Down and a final up, up, up: panting, turning, burning, and alive.
On Saturday the sky came down, sudden in its heaviness, and we watched in quiet worship of the water gathering, pooling up and spreading over the browning world. All day we sung the praise of the rain in our primordial rebirth; hummed with the voice and wings of thousands set free by the warm arpeggio of rain. In the morrow the air thickened, interminable until the fading memory of March.
When the morning’s cool passed into long heat I awoke and breathed and knew summer. The world thrummed and rang with the rain-brought bounty and stood changed, as it has done for eternity.
Later, along the river, water dragons bathed regally in the heady warmth, waving long-fingered hands to me as I passed. As round and round I spun on a lilac carpet of fallen blooms life slowed, redolent of salty nights heady with the scent of frangipanni dreams awaiting.
At Guyatt Park men worked in oblivion to the fecundity they were destroying. To their minds the grass necessitated cutting, because they cannot cut the rain. The loss of new life so recently surging forth was but a silly idea that followed in the wake of my passing. The play of silver gums in moonlight as the tall grass ripples is my memory alone.
Along the long flat, following the river and it bends and shines, the dusty gums hang limp in the languid air above. Corellas, raucous overhead, evoke the honey-eaters shyly watching my morning emergence, blue-spangled faces quiet in contrast. The sour note of sodden mulch reels as the river and I part prematurely. A gentle slope advances me towards a swarm of cars impatient as their late-to-class drivers.
The U and I turn our backs to each other and I face to the river with my innate infatuation with water. Up and up, chest wheezing the dirge of ascent, I climb until the water with its dreaming trees lie at my feet, before a decent to once more join it. Up and up, then a turn and the bitumen joins the buildings at my back; across the unfenced tortured greens to the river once more and the track courting its sinuous form.
Gravel crunches, king-fishers whistle; somewhere the Brahminy kites are rising on the still, heavy air and my exertion hums in tune with the universe. Hanging taut for an aeon, then a second later a swing of weight, and the river and I bow in one last farewell. Down and a final up, up, up: panting, turning, burning, and alive.