(prose form)
Perfect morning: sugary sand, sparse crowd, warm sun.
In afternoon, grow restless, leave the wife slumbering, take the trail at the southern end, across rugged headland of sharp volcanic lava. Meet two old men carefully negotiating trail, one who obviously had suffered a stroke--right leg stiff, right hand clutches close to chest. Make way for them, and ask how far still to go. “You’re about half way there,” they say.
Farther, come across a site of old native settlement: house foundations, stone rings for cooking. Encroaching, just yards up the slope, villas with red-tile roofs and horizontal pools--the kind that blends with sea and sky when one looks from the porch.
In the little rocky inlets, sea turtles glide, almost flying, in their element, elemental; their cold-blooded bodies cradled in the currents of the warm blue sea. They worry not about lost civilizations, current occupations, the end of worlds. They are living.
Perfect morning: sugary sand, sparse crowd, warm sun.
In afternoon, grow restless, leave the wife slumbering, take the trail at the southern end, across rugged headland of sharp volcanic lava. Meet two old men carefully negotiating trail, one who obviously had suffered a stroke--right leg stiff, right hand clutches close to chest. Make way for them, and ask how far still to go. “You’re about half way there,” they say.
Farther, come across a site of old native settlement: house foundations, stone rings for cooking. Encroaching, just yards up the slope, villas with red-tile roofs and horizontal pools--the kind that blends with sea and sky when one looks from the porch.
In the little rocky inlets, sea turtles glide, almost flying, in their element, elemental; their cold-blooded bodies cradled in the currents of the warm blue sea. They worry not about lost civilizations, current occupations, the end of worlds. They are living.
(poetry form)
Perfect morning:
sugary sand, sparse crowd, warm sun.
In afternoon, grow restless, leave the wife
slumbering, take the trail at southern end,
across rugged headland of sharp volcanic lava.
Meet two old men carefully negotiating trail,
one who obviously had suffered a stroke--
right leg stiff, right hand clutches close to chest.
Make way for them, and ask how far still to go.
“You’re about half way there,” they say.
Farther, come across a site of old native settlement:
house foundations, stone rings for cooking. Encroaching,
just yards up the slope, villas with red-tile roofs
and horizontal pools--the kind that blends with sea and sky
when one looks from the porch.
In the little rocky inlets, sea turtles glide, almost flying,
in their element, elemental; their cold-blooded bodies cradled
in the currents of the warm blue sea. They worry not
about lost civilizations,
current occupations,
the end of worlds.
~after Robert Bly
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