A lonely, dreary wilderness where cracked lips
Thirstily seek mirage’s oasis sips.
Water, a soothing balm of liquified gold
Calls, immerse yourself, its treasure to behold.
Rising tendrils heat heavy-laden shoulders
Like weights in her parched soul, foreboding boulders.
A shadow of herself cast long by the light
Reveals the hollow darkness, bereft of sight.
Stumbling, she wanders through this silhouette of strife
Seeking refreshment on her voyage of life.
She recognizes not herself, unsheltered, tanned
Barren, exposed, now naked, laying in the sand.
The hunter of the night bent his mighty bow
Orion let his pointed shaft of iron flow
Across air currents of distance, time, and space
His aim penetrates, bringing smiles to her face.
The arrow pierced her heart, bullseye to the core.
Target reached, the tip, its essence to freely pour,
Overflowing caverns. Spreading all the more,
Nourishing ev’ry dry, parched fissure, heart’s shore.
The hourglass silently measures falling grains,
As time . . .
The stinging, gritty sensation under her heavy eyelids, like fine granules of sand, irritate with every opening and blink. Rubbing, she remembers childhood bedtime stories of the Sandman and sleep as tiny particles break free near tear ducts, stuck to eyelashes like sand clinging to her feet, grinding between wet toes with each wriggling movement. Then she yawns, exhausted by the battling. With each wide-open stretching of her mouth, sundried balm coated lips, still raw and cracked like fissures in the parched earth, unsuccessfully resist muscular power while squished eyelids exert moisture forming pressure bringing salty droplets to the corners, leaving residual crusty stains.
She closes those blurry windows to her soul that seem to tap the replay button, forcing her to again endure the chafing sands of time. For, what is worse in this war of heart and mind? Eyes open or closed, she sees them both in the deserted mirage of her life. At least the streetlights and intermittent radio tower flashing against the predawn blackness present a welcome temporary focus in their play accompanied by a lively soundtrack of warbling songbirds and musical whirring snore-like rhythms. Words fill her mind instead of the moving picture show for brief minutes. Even those radiating distractions heat her shoulders, quickly becoming burning weight, casting her down turned mind to see the hollow futility laying in her shadowed heart. And she collapses into a heap, replaying what was, what is, what should be, what isn’t understood, what dreams. . . Perspective lost in a mix of lies, deceit, wishes, and somewhere, truth.
She lays on the couch watching robins, wrens, sparrows, and finches bathe in sunlight’s morning perches of leafy green outside her window. Simultaneously she looks upon her 5’3″ frame tucked in a space less than five square feet. Heels pressed into her meatless butt, knees almost touching her chin, left hand, palm up catching salty droplets, right arm ending in a bent wrist finding the tiny space between quads and chin, and her arched spine with knobby vertebrae stretched to round out the tight ball. Her eyes blink open and close like a camera’s shutter capturing the surreal intertwined scenes in mere seconds, a panorama of opposites, joyful twittering in togetherness versus forlorn solitude. Trying to block out light, she pulls her chin into the jugular notch, closing off all outside air. With fleece jacket and heavy blanket, she closes the shutters of her mind inhaling only her own moist, warm breath aggravating the innards rumblings’ ear-piercing nauseating prominence. With a heightened sense of sickening self-isolation, peeking out, she welcomes fresh air while attempting to remove herself from the stench. She almost quits, wishing to sleep unto death, but a glimmering ray bouncing through the glass gets captured in her visionary lens.
Briefly, she raises her head to allow emotion’s shot before grasping for the unreachable lens cap. Witnessing her fragile state, she fears. She feels the meaty oyster-like delicacy of her life wretched from its protective environment as she longs to lay within her enclosure. How can she awaken this hollowed shell to feel once again whole? She knows remnants exist, firmly entrenched on the delicate linings inside her heart. From the outside looking in, she wills life’s touch, lowering the focal length to allow for more light as she manually focuses on a reason for being. She concentrates on the paradoxical scene by slowly adjusting the rotating lens until viewing oneness, as blurriness fades away. Finding renewed meaning, she enters the picture, releasing the muscular bound ball. The viewfinder looking out presents a diorama of lively vistas, colourful in nature, and simplistically complicated in the processing mind.
Then, as if awash in the photographer’s darkroom liquid bath, patiently watching the transformative power reveal her captured perspective, she cringes. Dark versus light. She squints and strains against the flaming brightness burning in her eye sockets of fantasy. Forcefully attempting to smother the fueling source of fire, she feels the hard grittiness grinding beneath eyelids as she locks her eyelashes together. Pressure building squeezes ember’s ashy granules to the corners in stinging liquid, partially extinguishing dancing flames. Once again, alone in somberness, she feels cold.
With almost unbearable dread, she gradually adjusts the aperture of her emotional session to allow brief warming rays of hope to dispel the stark darkness of despairing loneliness. Staring at her photographs, real and imagined, she realizes the impossible and aches. Light versus dark, essential elements of photographic composition, viewed through the lens of moments.
The hourglass silently measures falling grains,
As time . . .
Wind power sep’rates her frame into dusty strains
As time . . .
Her shadowed, hollowed-out shell, only remains.
As time . . .
Wishes, dreams, fantasy, imaginings, all pains,
As time . . .
In the desert wilderness where shadows and mirages, duned by windstorms and heated by imagination’s dreams, the elusive replenishing oasis mystifies.
Life Happens . . . so do . .? What would you title me? Why?
Life Happens. . . so . . ., Storms, and Skeletons, Feet, Tents, Father/Daughter Memories, Missing Pieces, Waves, Gingerbread, What am I to do Now, and Choices.
Life Happens in Scriptural Musings. . . so do Dioramas, Prayers, What Lack I Yet, Swords and Shields, Rescues, the Shepherd, and Faith and Wholeness.
