Lichen on a Rock and Birdsong

IIt’s an alienating feeling, being herein a place not meant for you.It’s easy to feel like a trespasser,intruding on a world not your own. Alone, in fields of pale, pale green, suspended in aural night, the pressureof the silence bends and warps you,moves you to be silent too. Your breath is an aberration here, your presence a blemish,and so the soundless sky sands andsculpts you like wave on rock. Even colour is quietened. Bleached emerald plants, a blood-drained hue,spread in all directions beyond even the most optimistic of eyes. Scores of birds move like breath, their wingbeats and song make the slightest dent in the weighty stillness,a touch like feathers on skin. And the elephantine boulders that adorn the heads of hills,a kingly crown for each and allof these wardens of the world, their flesh is markedby ascetic lichen, ever fasting on the desolate, unyielding skin of barren rock. Press your ear to them andhear the gravity holding themso boldly, so nobly still, sculpted across a scale beyond wit. The weathered cracks and etches carry a macrocosmic testament; their countenance, an earthly visionbearing witness to creation. III have always commanded themto speak their secrets,(and I promise, extracting wordsfrom stone is no more fruitful than blood) but I see now my arrogance had deafened meto the words and teachingsthey already professed. I’ve never known claustrophobia,but this crawling coldness,the feeling of falling into open, openearth, may just be its equal.

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