I
Autumn tinsel floats gold on
July leaves and up goes the memory
flare. The carbon rod of winter
burns low and the dark is a mammoth
locked within ice. Watch the simultaneous
reels of the seasons spinning before
your eyes. A plane passes, and
upsets the late sun to a shadow-print
upon the wall. With barely a
movement we come from the bleaker months
to where the picture pans briefly,
dissolves upon the softer ores
of spring. Ah, but the Captains of
Industry are wheeling! A building boom
amongst the trees after the first
few casual blossoms had fallen along
suburban driveways. Observe the birds
investing in the green shares of September.
This side of the documentary we
view in armchair safety, Our Planet:
a well heeled cloud pads across
the moons surface, under the
vast drift-net of the night tuna boats
swing light probes about the arresting
waters another country claims.
David Attenborough journeys through
deserts to break the ancient limestone
tablets, and proclaim that fossils
are the visual memory of stone.
We observe in awe the Environmental
Mysteries and ask, is the suns bald glare
through the Glory Hole truly the
pointing finger of God? Laurence Olivier
puts on his final mask, looking
deathly, Tell my friends that I
miss them, and then fades from the
ramparts. I name two from the camp
of Good Attitude, builders of the beauty
of this planet the givers, not takers
who direct our gaze upward from the
burning footlights of the closing century,
toward the language of our Common Future.