Ground Swells
I don't know why I didn't hear them: the earth bulking and buckling, the stratum crackling, the soil breathing, the crushed lineage of rock resisting, the clay and sand yielding: their softness marked by an inexorable passage to the surface.
And only when the surface was split, and the grass parted into green continents, did I see them, the bones. They formed hands that were white and fleshless, yet possessing living veins that urged them through echelons of mud. They skinned their knuckles as they broke ground. Twisted and crippled phalanges and metacarpals scratched their way to the vast, irresistible air.
I saw other things besides. I saw the Uffington Horse break free of its Iron Age paddock and shake its white head. I saw bleached tributaries join together, their waters still and frozen, slashing away at the earth's skin.
I saw a harsh crochet - inexpert, uneven: a stubborn, unresponsive weave. I saw a fossilized web, its silks no longer bounding to an insect's sigh.
It caught leaves in its entwining pockets: harvest-colored chips doomed to digestion; doomed to become part of geology's mulch, to form another layer of groundwork that would burst apart when the bones rise again.
Comments
Wonderful wonderful! (are you really Lawrence Welk??)
Have you read Barbara Kingsolver, Aubrey?" Prodigal Summer" is my fave. They are all my faves, but she writes with this beautiful transporting manner.
How do you make twisted and crippled limbs sound like the most beautiful thing on earth?
WBaby - even when surrounded by sidewalks, streets, sinkholes and parking signs, she will not be denied.
Riss - magical kingdoms - how wonderful! I'm so glad I was able to take you back to that blissful time.
Alex - like a book, it's up to you to read the meanings behind the shapes and movements and life that's been presented to you.
Lavender - they're just trying to 'grab' your attention; to make sure you don't pass them by!
Renee - thank you so much. No mushrooms for me - I tried absinthe once, while I was at Berner's Hotel in London. I drank it, waited for something Rimbaud-ish to take over - when nothing did, I just staggered off to bed. No dreams.
Lauri - "But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot" I went to her website and pulled this quote out - now, that's really quite wonderful.
purplesque - I just look at things cockeyed (not cockneyed - that would be something different altogether) - it was your lovely intuition that saw the beauty of it!