Postcard poem

This one's going out to someone out there. I haven't sent you one in a while, but I have no doubt you'll figure out its provenance.

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Throwback Poem

Was rummaging through my files and found this prose poem I had written way back. Thought I'd do some revisions.

[Twilight 3 (2002) by Viggo Mortensen, from "45301".]

Beholder *

Gait still unsteady, he stops awhile, shakes off the last lingering moments of sleep, picks up his steps, bare feet trailing gravel as he ambles down the path, where everywhere is quiet, save for the whispering breeze, a grove of glistening beeches, a fluttering carpet of rustling leaves, muted scurryings of some nocturnal animal still savoring the thinning layers of darkness as it yields to the first slivers of dawn.

In one hand he cradles a Hasselblad, that battered black box, cherished companion and aide, spies a vast canvas overhead, readies supple fingers flecked with paint. Aiming this extended eye, he minces memory into a succession of frames, striving to capture what he knows will not keep still.

The ephemera he collects are as elusive as he, as silent, unobtrusive, fleeting manifestations in a world revolving too fast for appreciation, instances too rare for mass distribution. Furiously he shoots frame after frame, now and then shifting vistas on a single scene, oblivious to the observers who gather at his feet as the tide of day washes over the beeches that now seem to cover all the lands.

They look on in awe, marvel at how his feet barely touch the ground.

For he is both collector and subject, both hunter and hunted, both light-painter and point of interest, perceived only by the sharpest of sights. Magnified under lenses, he stands against sky, a quiet light blazing, burning his own hole in the sun.

*[This piece was a pre-cursor to Beholder II, which I posted here.]