small & bright

brain and spirit tracing patterns over water and moon and cloud, over city light lines from an aeroplane in the wide sky, the encompassing compass. the trees, cool and dark, rustle, creak, fill in the edges of the world. we are silhouettes on the edge, encompassed, small and warm, coming, going, eyes open to let in what little light there is, as the wind pushes the waves ever faster towards the shore.

place-pleasure, location-taste. i want to always be exactly where i am. my friend says we are like  sage-brush, we put down roots, deeply or in shallow ways, we extend and adapt to whatever is around us. what is this subconscious sense i feel? the awareness that hits me as i fall asleep? this pleasure that is the culmination of all parts, all senses, the spirit and the mind and the body combined, and located, in one place, as they should be? place-pleasure, location-taste. in the country, the hills embrace me, they are soft and maternal, lush, green, and sad. in the west, the mountains draw me in. i feel my smallness, they watch me, invite, they are holy, vast, quiet, listening. by the ocean, i sense its wetness first, its propensity for life: this division of water and land is the birthplace of all things. in my city, i feel the skip, the concrete, the heat and rhythm and open-armed dancing, so many bodies and all their smells. in the forest, i am hugged, darkly,  in complicated and comforting shapes, wind rustling and moving a thousand forms around me, connected. at home, i try as best i can to formulate and create my own place-pleasure, my own location-taste. a landscape of a bed,  a forest of a room. but nothing ever tastes so good as the real thing.

in the evening, coming home from the store, i catch a glimpse of the park down girard avenue, the haze-y light of summer’s steaming sun, the layers of faded, washed out landscapes, subtle light, purples, yellows, and the dark edges of trees: catalpa, oak, honey locust. i recognize their silhouettes like a lovers in the sunset. I go to the rock and watch them, watch the light move around them as they sway in the breeze and shower me with remnants of the earlier rain. i want to paint them,  i think, but once home, their shapes and complexity, their leafiness and lines elude me, and I again return to painting silhouettes  of people,  of lovers, in the sunset.