Earlier today,
I laid outside atop the snow,
A feat that I haven't tried
Since life's true colors showed.

The frost numbed my body,
I'm sure red flushed into my cheeks;
I stared speculatively at the sky,
My eyes searched and seeked.

I wanted to understand the beauty,
That nature offers so readily, the solace,
That it blankets us in even on cold days;
I wanted to understand beauty that is flawless.

My tired eyes embraced small, soaring figures
That coursed through the air with grace;
Content to go their own paths,
Not engaged in a petty race.

The figures were falcons,
That spiraled and sailed on wind above me,
Probably heading south,
For warmth to set them free.

But in that moment I compared them
To man-produced ashes;
Gray soot that courses through the air
Dashes, in varying directions,
As fire burns.

In that moment, the birds drifted through the air
So aimlessly, like the ashes do,
Landing faraway,
Wherever they flew.

Nature itself could be ashes,
If people continue on this path;
This destruction ought to incur
Some sort-of wrath.

Over night busses infused with the smell of *** and popcorn
Bright eyed, happy kids with grubby faces no tears in sight
Dusty chaotic little towns fully charged with life
A chance meeting with a wild character
Offers of an experience we couldn't refuse
We paid up
Loaded up
And sped off
Into the velvet of the night
Headlights and darkness wrestling in the dust
Then the dead of the desert
Nothing


Everything
Night skies bursting with stars
Midnight picnics
Cheap box wine, sandwiches and chocolate
Chasing enormous moons
Morning hangovers
Magnified by the stark sun
Fluid shadows cast
Where waves once crashed
But now
A barren emptiness
Holding so many secrets
Looking very closely
Oh, we did look closely
Evidence of ancient aquatic life
Chalk like ghosts set in the sand
Appearing only as the wind allows
Whale bones and rare blackened sharks teeth
There in the most arid place on earth
The Atacama desert Peru
Three days and nights we were out there hunting
Amongst the bashful bones of her prey
Hunting the formidable, elusive and extinct
M E G A L O D O N
Apex predator of the oceans
There in that parched sand
Clear signs of her hunting
But she remained unseen
Too modest to bare her beauty to this martian land
Waiting for the seas to rise
Maybe not for too much longer