With Ripples on a Silent Sky, we explore nature from a coral reef to a mountain peak. The mood is contemplative, the music experimental.
SNORKEL
Breathe in---Breathe out
through the tube that connects you
to the other world,
your world.
Salt water envelopes you.
You flap flippers
in the shimmering firmament
below the surface.
The ocean holds you
dispassionately,
like a child’s toy
to be discarded.
Clown fish surround you
then flee in an instant.
Angels beckon you
into this strange heaven.
Butterflies scatter
like swirling mirages.
Only coral fingers
point steadily homeward,
back to where the bubbles go.
Breathe in---Breathe out.
Red and purple sea fans,
orange sponges,
yellow brain coral,
the colors
dazzle your eyes in the rippled light,
a billion coincidences
of self replication.
Here randomness and organization
blends into wild beauty
not designed for the human eye.
Yet you are here,
a voyager and voyeur.
You inhale enough wonder
to negate that human impulse
to become an agent of chaos,
the careless destroyer.
Breathe in---Breathe out.
Among the festive hues, camouflaged fish
and crabs and mollusks lurk
awaiting advantage, avoiding threat,
in the accumulated deposits of carbonate.
A dull blue parrot fish nibbles
at the reef, foraging for algae.
The maze of coral is both metropolis
and forest, an invertebrate and algal
symbiosis.
It is both garden and battlefield.
Various species of coral
compete in an incremental struggle
for precious real estate.
Polyps graze on plankton,
each with its circle of stinging tongues,
a palate of poison.
So many things that sting:
the statuesque coral,
the passive jelly fish with dangling tendrils,
the sea anemone,
flowers of the deep.
Venom seems the most basic defense
against complex uncertainty.
Breathe in---breathe out.
Gaping mouth, quick teeth,
a moray eel waits
in a shadowy crotch of coral,
waits like a sniper with a cocked rifle
for the blue window of water
to turn dark.
It’s tongue is as pink
as the finger of a child.
It smells food,
feels the riffles of passing fish.
There are electrical pulses
in the water, ions, tastes,
signals sent and received
by simple sentience.
A silver sword with eyes and teeth,
a barracuda studies your alien shape,
your strange movements
trying to discern vulnerability.
Its brain performs algorithms,
weighing risk and hunger.
It moves away deliberately, confidently,
searching for certain opportunity.
Breathe in---breathe out.
Hold your breath and dive
to the bottom.
You feel the pressure in your ears,
taste the salt seeping into your mouth.
Here crustaceans scurry and creep.
They harvest detritus
that drifts like snow.
A sting ray erupts
from its hiding place in the sand.
It swims like a banner in a wind.
It circles and nudges you
with its body,
soft as the nose of a dog.
Perhaps it shares your curiosity
and fear or whatever passes
for feeling in the language of fish.
The sting ray moves into the blue
distance, satisfied to have touched
a creature from above.
Now you rise to the surface
to spew the water from your snorkel
and float in the duel worlds
of water and air.
The sky and sea encircle you.
You are as significant
as a broken piece of kelp.
Breathe in.......
C. 2002, Larry Simpson
Click here for Glass Canoe Audio
THE GLASS CANOE
Come with me
in my glass canoe,
down a river through forests
pierced only by the cries of birds.
We float among fallen blossoms and flitting moths
through mist that carries the scent
of serpents and fungus and a thousand mysteries.
We float among bathing boulders,
brown and rounded in shadow and reflection.
Nuggets shimmer
like the fish that flee beneath us.
Eddies swirl
the shed skins of cicadas.
Riffles rake slivers of sun
across ripples of shifting sand.
Leeches slither through writhing reeds.
A heron stands still then strikes
the bent image of a minnow.
Come with me in my glass canoe,
down a canyon into the heart
of hard rock speckled with fossils,
past laughing splatters of spring fed falls,
into the twisting grip of the current.
Here the river wrestles and roars and tumbles!
Here whitewater dances and drums and splashes!
Turn in the torrent, weave and bob like a leaf
caught in froth and undertow!
Come with me in my glass canoe!
Drift in the calm between cliffs
and stare at the slit of distant sky
like the thread of a river in an eagle’s eye.
Rock with every ripple,
until, with each turn of the canyon,
the hum of thunder becomes more urgent
and the walls quiver with the sound of falling water!
Follow the spray cascading off rocks,
falling, falling, water and air dissolving into thunder
and irridescence and foam,
a river that shatters then takes form again.
Come with me in my glass canoe!
C 1999, Larry Simpson
Mt.
Snow scrubs the face of the mountain like a rag in the fist of the wind.
It bites your face, fills the slits of your eyes with white.
Snow on snow is all to see.
When the sun returns, there is the exquisite blindness of sun on snow in clear air.
You turn away from the glare to stare at the barren peak.
There is the sparkle of snow launched on an updraft.
Drifts color their own shadows with reflections of the sky.
Your feet push forward on waxed skis snaking a trail between the top
of fir trees that peer from the soft vortexes that surround them.
You climb one step at a time, ski poles skewed like legs of the spiders
that somehow survive even on this snow.
Panting, you offer the mist of your breath to God and the sapphire sky.
Sweat trickles down your back.
The snow sucks up sound.
Silence is broken only by the murmur of wind, and occasional crack of ice
or the roar of a falling mountainside.
Step after step, breath after breath, you climb to where trees cannot grow,
where bare rock and blue ice rises above great waves of snow.
You gaze at the surrounding mountains in the fine air.
On one of these peaks, the Burgess Shale holds the compressed patterns of lives
that resemble demons from a drug induced dream.
They died five hundred million years ago in the bottom of a sea
that has long since risen nine thousand feet.
How many trillion mundane miracles
have led to this wonderful moment of life?
Glaciers have scratched and gnawed at this broken bone of a mountain.
A blue arc of ice is all that is left of the last avalanche.
It clings to a cirque high on the peak, hangs like a deadly rainbow.
You ski on silken dunes above the clouds.
You fall into your own laughter
and the blinding spray
of crystal sky.
Larry C. Simpson
Click here for Audio of Still River
Dark river, hidden depths,
mirrored tunnel of trees;
so much stillness flowing around us.
Treed turtles bask from dipped,
curving necks of cabbage palms.
Mammoth limbs of live oak,
shaggy with Spanish moss, hang overhead.
Cooters swivel necks staring momentarily
then somersault into the river.
The tip of the nose of a turtle pokes through
the surface, then another. Then another.
As if by unobserved moves,
the bankside seems creeping down
into a two dimensional world of water surface.
Or perhaps that thinner world is being bourn up
into its look-alike skyward depths.
The dark window already appears cracked
by fallen spider strands,
but the inkblot symmetry shatters
at the passing slice of our canoe.
Here illusion seems real, reason, alien.
Adrift between two banks, two skies,
between branches suspended above and between us,
we dabble paddles
into a flow of indistinct shapes
that waver past below us like dreams.
The sky is gray, malignant, fearfully quiet.
Trees like outstretched fingers.
The water, somber.
We float into a throat of shadows.
There’s a feeling that you might slip
ever into the stillness.
Don’t fall in.
We ride the surface.
So much stillness flowing around us.
Stillness dissolves with the slow takeoff
of a water turkey.
The anhinga escapes sight,
and quiet finds its own level.
Here expansive tranquility embraces
quick violence, splash and cry.
Here time seems tied in knots that bind
past and future to this primal present.
Like a kink in this thread of river,
we pass through a fabric of sense and response.
A thousand unseen eyes watch,
snouts sniff, each ripple perceived
in a dozen ways,
life sustained by precise stealth.
A tiny tongue ripples in and out
through the stiff smile of a cottonmouth.
Braided to a branch, the snake waits.
So much stillness flowing around us.
There is silent tension that tugs
at the hackles of your neck,
makes you want to cock your head listening,
draw breath slowly, feeling each odor,
think with the base of the spine.
Don’t fall in.
The water is shallow.
It’s the deep wilds that will get you,
send you thrashing through the palmettos
to fall clawing at the mud,
burrowing like a turtle into the gut of the swamp.
Into stillness.
A nest of baby gators.
They waddle into the river.
Gone hiding.
Where’s mama?
A green mat clogs the river.
We fight through the mass of bulbous bladders,
water hyacinth, pretty river strangler.
Nearby, a splash!
How many gators hide here?
Soon the banks themselves submerge.
Nowhere to get out.
The river widens into cypress swamp.
Trees fill the distance.
Trees, tall, stout, dense and many.
A woodpecker weaves his way
through the cypress stand.
Stalagmitic cypress knees surround each tree,
dwarf-like things rising up, born of mud.
The water lies with fallen logs, zig-zags
of downed trees, bridges from nowhere
to nowhere.
There is the gurgle and dip of paddles.
Until we drift again.
So much stillness flowing around us.
The laughter of a woodpecker echoes
from each tree. Then silence.
Then the hum of one mosquito.
Barred owls hoot: Who cooks for youoo?
Who cooks for you-alll?
The sounds are eerie, thick and slow fading.
Here the river divides into runnels,
a maze of streamlets that branch
and tangle among the trees.
A place called the fourteen forks.
We watch for the smallest ripple,
a blur in the smooth skin of water,
watch to see where the current goes.
Follow the slow drift of a leaf.
We fear the nearing nightfall.
Poling paddles through shallows,
we snake our way through the narrow turns.
We slide under, climb over uprooted trees.
A slow spatter of rain pecks at the water.
Cold droplets nudge our necks.
We wonder if this streamlet
will ever return to river.
We fear the rain and the dark.
Woodpecker laughter chides us.
At last the stream widens,
opens into river.
We paddle quickly against the dusk.
Owls hoot from the long colonnade of cypress.
At last we see fishermen.
We are ready for land,
but somehow reluctant.
Like dreamers not quite awakened,
we drift for shore.
So much stillness flowing around us.
Click here for audio to Boone Forest
Bright sky.
Expanse of hardwoods.
Jagged escarpment.
The emptiness beckons us to the edge.
Solitary leaves dive into the deep shade.
They will join the roots and worms and humus.
The milkweed seeds of distant fields have taken wing
carrying sun spun on the wind.
The seeds motion us to follow to a place without trails,
a place of rattlesnakes and maidenhair ferns.
The cliff forbids our entry.
We skirt the edge of azalea, reindeer moss and sandstone.
The wind slithers through trees.
A ravine hints of a way down, a dry stream bed.
Here a freshet once tumbled from the cliff.
Now no water, and no way down.
Here we recline beneath nodding rhododendrons
above the thirsty forest in the ghost of a stream.
Despite the stillness, there is a feel of fluid
abandon that shaped this cleft of stone.
Now, there is only the drizzle
of hemlock needles against dry leaves.
Who is this woman beside me?
This woman that has held me when I was weak,
fought me when I was arrogant
and loved me from my skin to my soul?
Who is this man that I am
who whittles clouds into dreams and thoughts and doubts?
What creature hides beneath this pool of silt called self?
The wind carries away the questions.
Alone, I am a blank sky, a plain of endless fog,
a shadow of hungering in an overcast night.
And together?
Together we lie in a quiet stream bed
and for an undivided moment are the water:
Water born of storm, pulled by earth,
sluiced through stones.
Water running wild with eddies and minnows,
and from this ledge falling into mist
and sunlight, and shade.
Together we slip into sleep.
