Ghost Ranch: change of vision

four days I watched wide vistas
change in minutes from blind
rain to tearing sun
to brawling clouds
& lightning
illuminating the big
stone prophets lining the mesa walls

but today I walked
with my head
down
studied the pores
in the red/black grains of sand the lizard
& bear intricately woven into iridescent
lichen on a solitary boulder
I ignored the approaching
thunder  listened
to the chanting
rattle in a cricket’s early
evening prayer

& tonight I abandon the big-
voiced writers  read
haiku
from a monk’s ancestral
brush of small soft
hairs plucked from an elephant’s
inner ear     hear
him whisper from the end
of Heaven’s River

 

Frank Rossini grew up in New York City & moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1972. Over the course of fifty years, he has published poems in various journals including The Seattle Review, Chiron Review, Raven Chronicles, & Clackamas Literary Review. Silverfish Review Press & sight | for | sight books have published his books of poems.

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