Plateau and Quietude
©April 4th/5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
A plateau of bald rock
At the very top of Wright’s Tower
Lies back like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky
On a quiet beach.
She breathes quietly.
The trees encircling her
Whisper sweet nothings,
Turning light into leaves.
A hawk wheels patiently
Far above in the sun-beaten
Rain-saturated sky of Spring.
We cross the highway,
My dog and I, two wanderers
Taking a known path,
Seeking the unknown.
We reach the woods.
Green-gold slippery shadows,
Daffodil-yellow sunlit paths,
A burst of quietude –
These are ours today.
I walk, hoping for sudden
Red flash of fox, or
Grey-brown dart of coyote,
Holly runs forward and back
Looping around me, hoping for pursuit.
An impudent squirrel, semaphoring insults,
Or rude rabbit, flashing its behind
As it taunts her, will do nicely.
She slices through the green wood-light
As it parts neatly
In her canine wake.
We see nothing that we seek.
Just a pair of loud, proud geese,
Walking confidently towards the pond,
Which, rain-swollen and ready for turtles
Makes room for them,
The water trembling in the light
Like a vision in a sweet dream,
From which I would never want
To emerge.
Holly is cautious;
Geese are loud, belligerent
Hers is an exuberant nature,
But geese worry her;
Of course, she’d never admit this.
She looks elsewhere, casual
As a girl walking down a city-street
Hoping to not be noticed.
The geese pay no heed,
As they slide into the water
Honking like mad rickshaw-horns.
We leave them behind,
Rippling the water into green-gold silk.
Holly lopes up the slopes,
I follow, sometimes stumbling.
The Tower looms in the distance.
The gravel path gives way
To dark earth, squelchy mud,
Soft pine needles, leaves.
A sudden movement scatters them,
And we see young, striped snakes
Skittering away into the undergrowth,
Vanishing at our approach.
Tenderness floods me.
I am grateful for this glimpse.
We climb up the hill,
Reach the tower, sit on a rock,
Watch the traffic move far below
On the improbable highway:
Two shimmering metallic snakes
Flowing in two different directions.
I shudder at them.
My dog pays no heed.
She is of the Moment,
And the Moment is Eternal.
The silence of mid-day is broken
A single bird-song questions the air,
But there is no reply.
I try and forget the things
I always remember:
Rising seas, melting glaciers
Punishing heat, dying animals,
Plastic-swollen seabirds,
Parched snakes, ailing bees.
How could all that be
On a day such as this?
I push that reality away
And seek these woods,
Knowing that illusions exist,
Contradictions collide.
I grieve the loss of all
That I’ve yet to see,
And the world is vast.
But for now, my dog and I
Reach our plateau that,
Lies like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky,
And I lie on my back
Right there, and watch the skies
Wheeling around me, the rock
Sunning herself, solid and quiet,
The trees whispering to us,
And my dog panting
Quietly by my side.
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Today’s NaPoWriMo Day 5 prompt was to “write a poem that is based in the natural world: it could be about a particular plant, animal, or a particular landscape. But it should be about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. ”
