[Image: “Dare You — Truly Dare You?,” by JES; photo of a door in the wall at Ludlow Castle, Ludlow, UK (taken May, 2018; shared here under a Creative Commons License — for more information, see this page at RAMH)]
From whiskey river (italicized stanzas):
When planets softly collide
This is not a poem about dust,
there have been too many of those,
but may be about wind, who knows,
the remaking of deserts, endlessly,
when sand becomes a definition
of scale or boundaries or change
like weather squeezing out lines of heat
that drives from solid midnight freeze
up into the sweat pressure of midday.
These conditions are inescapable, no relief —
still there are flowers, stubborn and pink.Yesterday, strangely, began with showers,
laying the heat demons down and out
for a moment and the air, wet
with the ghost of something old.
Whispers like clouds of aimless particles
which one day could form something solid,
whispers and the slight reverberation
of planets softly colliding,
showering each other with dust,
which they have been trying to avoid,
hoping for a poem about something greener.As if rock didn’t survive,
and dust didn’t dance on air.
(Jill Jones [source])
…and:
“A steep and unaccountable transition,” Thoreau has described it, “from what is called a common sense view of things, to an infinitely expanded and liberating one, from seeing things as men describe them, to seeing them as men cannot describe them.” Man’s mind, like the expanding universe itself, is engaged in pouring over limitless horizons. At its heights of genius it betrays all the miraculous unexpectedness which we try vainly to eliminate from the universe. The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness. One does not see, one does not hear, until he speaks to us out of that limitless creativity which is his gift.
(Loren Eiseley [source])
