Handful of Dust

frozen the mammoth, ice prison
Or am I?
Who's caged really  in crystal time
Cinched the cooler
glass glacier world, standing
watching, watched?
Gimmicky, are we all? Finicky, though lodged within the aqua pearls of iceberg penitentiary, slow as the ice floe, stuck in ocean eddies. It's only the top, the upturned face of the iceberg, breathing in the sunlight - the peninsula of a vast, underwater continent of ice, blinding bright in the dawn. Am I a penguin, sheltered safely en masse; a walrus, all tusks and whiskers, clamping onto the ice and hunting molluscs; or, perhaps, a polar bear, transparent skin and ravenous fight?
Marble, mystery of water and lime
my eyes swirl in striated lines
blue and white, her paintings
blurring, arching, and dividing
mosaic of color
do the fish beneath understand their sky?
do we?


http://funnydoom.com/wp-content/gallery/8caves/caves-0001.jpg

Today was not a writing day, I'm afraid. Everything fell flat on its face. Yesterday: that was a writing day.


A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~ TS Eliot - Wasteland