you can’t know. They scribble
dark matters on the stream below,
and they train their animated whispers
to piggyback the summer wind’s
fiery bellows. Moments later
it reaches you, their angry murmur,
but they won’t teach you its meaning,
only the sustaining double-
vision of a revenge that will come
first, with a thrumming ache
and then their resilient thirst.
7 comments:
Nice concise piece, Francis. It does leave me with many things to ponder. I like that.
Pamela
I like the idea of a personified earth taking revenge upon us. It's better somehow than people fighting people. A "sustaining double-vision of a revenge" is strong phrasing. Great piece, Francis. It gets me thinking.
A possible backlash of revenge for Bin Laden couldn't help but inch its ways into my worries, too, with this piece.
~Brenda
nice, neat one. I especially like the first three lines. You don't seem to need a novel to get the words in without straining them.
Francis, concise and powerful. I like where you begin with us not knowing what the hillsides want. And then that ending, that "double-/vision of a revenge". I thought of earthquake, the "thrumming ache" and then tsunami, the "resilient thirst". An excellent take on the wordle words.
Richard
Thanks all...
@Pamela I'm trying to train myself to say less :).
@Brenda I didn't have the OBL killing in mind when I wrote this, but I can see how that sense of "blow back" would sneak into the reading of it. The idea of an environmental blow back (especially with all of the strange weather and natural disasters recently) was more what motivated it.
@Brenda Sometimes I do need a novel, but this one came together pretty economically, which was good after a busy April.
@Richard I didn't have the specific case of the Japan quake/tsunami in mind for this, but it does fit with that really well.
Excellent. I sense a prescient warning in your words.
ViV
yes the Japanese earthquake, or even the Auckland one. it feels like a restless earth.
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