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simmons trail

Passed the fallen Manzanita
a grade meanders upward
nosing the deer trail
to a proscenium of purple bursting flower fists
the honeyed hypno-hum of the cicadas
buzzing like thick, narcotic dreams.

Green hills of serpentine
shred green paper stones
crumbling down the craggy trail,
a trickling, creeping creek
mapping crystalline directions
feeding the hushed, blue roar of the ocean.

A twisting Manzanita stands chest-high
sheared by knives of wind
crowned with manicured jade
and held aloft by angular, mahogany bones.

 

      Windswept fields of white grass
          blanket the cracked earth,
     grey lichen strangling the somber
                             w    t
                             h    r
                              i     e
                             t     e
                              e    s

The golden noon shooting radiant beams
through hovering motes of flowering dust
drifting near the hungry mouth of a dark forest.

And it was here the wooden spider crept
collapsed in crooked splinters
gesturing crookedly in every direction
settling in the sleep of eruptions
high above the foaming Pacific.

But when you come here,
look closely or you may miss


   ~ flying unnoticed ~


a giant, humming bumblebee
broad and furry, like the belly of a horse
hovering inches off the forest floor
moving like a striped bull
through slim trees,


each vast stripe, a plain of Marigolds.

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