Even that current rapid in the brain
like a digital signal cheeping "where
where where..." damps down in the broil of noon.
Below, the ponds and metal rooftops flare
to streaks. And my need, to peel the bright veneer
from the world, and walk inside, and feel my life
crucial as plotline... seems to disappear.
The aspens sizzle. Towers of loosestrife
shiver with flies. Somewhere a satellite
opens its shutter, clicks on freeways and fields.
Somewhere demonstrators, chanting, fight
to hold ground against the encroaching shields.
Somewhere a grizzly blinks at the sun motes.
And all that shimmering merge is elsewhere. Here
the world is oak leaf, stillness, blue. It floats
in the heat, goes liquid at the edge, then clear.
That digital tremor, that hard-wired yearning
saying that just beyond beyond beyond
real life lies waiting: even its returning
now is not distraction, but feels bound
to this fierce calm. The granite ledges glare
beneath the pine boughs, quaver, and the heart
flows out, right now, one thing with the others here:
shot through with light and natural and apart.
By Peter Campion