Oregon landscape: a poem

the clouds part
and the light of Heaven breaks
through like
the glory
of God
to shine on man
with all His resplendence.

like giant
photon beams
shredding the clouds
into Swiss cheese
and rolling over
the hills like
focused magnifying glasses
of otherworldly beings —
maybe angels —
looking for something
they’d lost upon the Earth.

where did you put it last?

if I knew, Jerry,
I wouldn’t be searching, would I?

the light billows out
like atomic fallout
and disperses molecular radiation
into the pitch black
and the sky-mist shudders
in reverence of it.

quaking clouds
blanketing the atmosphere
in wet darkness —
scattering like
mice in the sunlight —
afraid of the revelations
it holds against them.

hills the greenest green
they have ever been since
the creation of the world
in Genesis 1 —
set aside and persevered for
this very photo —
contrasted
against the dimness
of the distant plains
like some old Western movie
and touched up in post:

extreme color correction.
Technicolor 5.0.

broken fence posts,
snapped and faded
like old photographs
still developing.
that silent image
caught by machine to mark
the occasion forever.

snow patches
white like salt
upon the mountainsides
and spilled there by giants
from the minds of children,
or from fantasy stories,
by Tolkien or
George R. R. Martin.

oaky trees leaning
in drunkenness
against the wind,
unable to catch their footing
against the skewed gravity
God’s presence
had placed upon them
by merely appearing
in this small patch
of Eden
in Oregon.

A poem from my book “we’re all just wanderers in the end” which you can get on Amazon here.

#poetry #poem #oregon