NASA Image of the Day

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Picture Perfect

Behold; the storied pastoral landscape, alive with singsong cricket and cicada's chirping,
Harbingers of the morning's larger, musicked throng.
In close ink of night, small residents of field and farm, pasture and portion, chortle the quiet ruminations undisturbed, and
sing the expected song of daily practice and expectation, in time with the murk of moontide.

And yet.....a pause in the mantra.

An eruption of thought, errant and long repressed; controlled harpy shriek and rage contained within the quiet certitude of docile social order - expressed groan of the land, expelled.

The polite certitude and smug assurance with which the imposition and carefully-structured drudgery is inflicted is precise; pointed....unrelenting and upheld with the same hands that
wave with vehemence "we hold these truths to be self-evident".....relaying with dull eyes a kind of vapid, blank acknowledgement of sound, like the lifelessness of a rosary strangled by rote, the words lost in the thick, viscous phlegm of an assured future of misunderstood freedom, choking on its mockery.

Expedience looms like sharpened shadows, reaching into and amidst the private dreams, the unpainted, still shock of the defiant rosebud, the bursting gladiola, the wild and winsome snapdragon, marking the expert boundaries of the furrowed rows with blinks of unbelonging and inappropriate, unfruitful beauty. Uncaring, the snapdragons frame the labour in portraiture of unsung greatness, decorative and momentary. They are crushed, suddenly, by a hard boot, unseen, while the wild and miniature hand close behind stops, delight in the tug that steals the unexpected petals to furtive, transported beauty in a cracked cup, its fragrance the childish hope of stronger comforting ghosts.

Far away, the groan washes the blowing earth in the grey light with eerie wail, rotes unheard, small hands stilled......boots crunching on scorched and jangling bones.

We are here, and here, and here, when winds carry siren songs of birds, and blood-washed soil reveals the lie of unquenched Death's unceasing thirst. And yet, we are nowhere, safe in the polite vanquishing of that step away that is a breath and silence of
nothing to do.

Dawn M. Nevills






 



Picture Perfect

Behold; the storied pastoral landscape, alive with singsong cricket and cicada's chirping,
Harbingers of the morning's larger, musicked throng.
In close ink of night, small residents of field and farm, pasture and portion, chortle the quiet ruminations undisturbed, and
sing the expected song of daily practice and expectation, in time with the murk of moontide.

And yet.....a pause in the mantra.

An eruption of thought, errant and long repressed; controlled harpy shriek and rage contained within the quiet certitude of docile social order - expressed groan of the land, expelled.

The polite certitude and smug assurance with which the imposition and carefully-structured drudgery is inflicted is precise; pointed....unrelenting and upheld with the same hands that
wave with vehemence "we hold these truths to be self-evident".....relaying with dull eyes a kind of vapid, blank acknowledgement of sound, like the lifelessness of a rosary strangled by rote, the words lost in the thick, viscous phlegm of an assured future of misunderstood freedom, choking on its mockery.

Expedience looms like sharpened shadows, reaching into and amidst the private dreams, the unpainted, still shock of the defiant rosebud, the bursting gladiola, the wild and winsome snapdragon, marking the expert boundaries of the furrowed rows with blinks of unbelonging and inappropriate, unfruitful beauty. Uncaring, the snapdragons frame the labour in portraiture of unsung greatness, decorative and momentary. They are crushed, suddenly, by a hard boot, unseen, while the wild and miniature hand close behind stops, delight in the tug that steals the unexpected petals to furtive, transported beauty in a cracked cup, its fragrance the childish hope of stronger comforting ghosts.

Far away, the groan washes the blowing earth in the grey light with eerie wail, rotes unheard, small hands stilled......boots crunching on scorched and jangling bones.

We are here, and here, and here, when winds carry siren songs of birds, and blood-washed soil reveals the lie of unquenched Death's unceasing thirst. And yet, we are nowhere, safe in the polite vanquishing of that step away that is a breath and silence of
nothing to do.

Dawn M. Nevills