NATURE (REVISED)

BY JAI

Looking longingly through melted sand sheets
I ponder perspective, reflecting on nature.
My reflection warped in weight of years gone by.

Malformed stones, all angular and set in slabs,
mountainous in their stacking, their ore scraped and seared,
burned with fire and beaten into opulent lattice works of woe.

Beautiful trees of all shapes and sizes,
homogenized leaves and bark of blue — gray hues,
wondering only so far, lost in the lack of distance.

Constant, protracted, syncopated in time,
dedicated to moving A to B and back again,
you could set your watch by the ebbing
and flowing streams of souls, life in lines.

Inspired by the wood wound tightly in plaster,
laid out side-to-side, end-to-end,
all painted, and pristine as they molder.

I become amused with the singsong waters howling,
behind the angularly stacked stones, super-heated and
under pressure whistling through the many led laced springs.

A tear shed through blood torments my face again,
cheeks flush with shame for having endured it,
having been touched by its tenderness.

My jaw juts and trembles in the darkest parts of my day,
burrowed deep inside my skull shaped cave, pondering the jungle,
which writhes and rails, as it sticks and stones me.

Watching the wild things hunt and scheme
seeking sustenance, as prey scampers, evades,
finally faltering in the length of days.

I am astounded at the trauma, which does not transform.
I am impressed at the nature of transference,
my perception is ever more altered.

The conversion of time and space and immutable elements,
all elements, all in nature — put to pains
misshapen in human brains.

My nature sings out, cries out, howls in the predawn chill,
Make it mean something,
fully aware that something mean made it.

The Creator did not create this,
yet it is a natural outcropping of his creations worst dreams.
Their inclinations toward order empirically evidenced in malice.

How the heart breaks at the nature of need and unfulfillment,
how the hope grows in the depths of
ravines crafted from sharp wire and woe.

In the turn of time, the global spin and wobble,
no matter where we stand there is the ever lapping of the sun.
All is rotation an elliptic revelation of the new day.

Looking longingly from within the mountain, through sheets
of melted sand, I see that nature is in the palm of my hand
as I propagate another pot full of soil and seed.

I notice that nature is the place where I find it, and
the spider doesn't care that her web is hanging from an iron bar
or that her babies are hatched into a concrete crevice.

The ants crawl and scrape, hauling
an existence through the darkness either way.
The beetle blunders lost in the heaps of heathen holdings
knowing nothing of steel shelves.

And my garden, my luscious and manifold matriculated garden,
has many platforms and fills multiple spaces
— mostly hearts and minds.

But also pots and bowls, and used coffee containers,
cups and jars, and all things repurposed, just like the hearts and minds
that hold them unknowingly (for me).

Trauma that is not transformed is transferred,
the Creator will give beauty for ashes but requires us
to plant the seeds and sometimes water the soil. | JM

JAI WRITES FROM OSP. HE IS A CONSTANT GARDENER.