Shade In The Afternoon Heat
It's blistering hot and I know better these days to get a water bottle along in my excursions. In the heat of the afternoon sun your mind wanders into both the distant and near mirages. You recall the treasured steps you have taken with others, and how these have been great memories.
Now, the steps you take are paired with your own, left and right.
The birds go on their business and the lilies are blooming large in the stagnant pond: ironical that out of the muck such beauty emerges.
My own bike wheels spin with control, and I reel at the idea that I am steering my own direction to an imaginary line, which seems to have been crossed over, but another looms like a hallucination in the bellows of turns and bends.
I wonder how my friends are. The silence in my mind is almost deafening, if not for that same heat which burns the dark shade beneath all living things. Suddenly the sun is both giver and taker. On the dust trail, my footsteps are softer, and remembering my days at the Sahara, and horse riding, I think of the many good things that I have already been fortunate to enjoy. This makes the heat bearable, slightly.
At night, it is not under a great sky of stars or glowing pink clouds that I hunch under. Rather, I sleep with the sound knowledge of forgetfulness, and its luxuriant mist that hides and dissipates memory.
There is always the draught that blows overland, especially in such islands as where we live, and that is lost in the windbreakers of window panes and doorways, of sheets and dreamcatchers. Instead, we crouch and hunker into odd shapes snuggling for the missing warmth as we turn up the 
thermostat to chill and turn frosty the very air we gasp to burn our own heat.
There was a tiny stream which I was used to crossing, and because of my influence, enjoyed the going and comings as I pleased. That stream is now a torrent of passing events that I cannot wield over. That river now separates my whole being from the happy fields of friendship and companionship. I see the pasture on the other side: slightly green and ready almost for harvest. But on the desolate bank where I stand, the view is always good and out of reach.
"You got no fuckin' idea how bad it gets. I am not you... I wish I knew how to quit you."
It is with these thoughts that I confront my reality, and the sharp winds that knot my sails and hold me back against the shoreline. I cannot yet break free from the dark shade that glooms overhead, and race out again, into the afternoon heat.
(Above: atop the Acropolis Hill where the Parthenon stands, Athens - northwards, the small mount in the background is the famed Mt St. George, with its tiny chapel and Orthodox monastery crowning the summit; middle left and right: with June, horse-riding among the Pyramids at Giza, Cairo, Egypt; and below right: atop the highest mastaba at the Great Pyramids.)
It's blistering hot and I know better these days to get a water bottle along in my excursions. In the heat of the afternoon sun your mind wanders into both the distant and near mirages. You recall the treasured steps you have taken with others, and how these have been great memories.
Now, the steps you take are paired with your own, left and right.
The birds go on their business and the lilies are blooming large in the stagnant pond: ironical that out of the muck such beauty emerges.
My own bike wheels spin with control, and I reel at the idea that I am steering my own direction to an imaginary line, which seems to have been crossed over, but another looms like a hallucination in the bellows of turns and bends.
I wonder how my friends are. The silence in my mind is almost deafening, if not for that same heat which burns the dark shade beneath all living things. Suddenly the sun is both giver and taker. On the dust trail, my footsteps are softer, and remembering my days at the Sahara, and horse riding, I think of the many good things that I have already been fortunate to enjoy. This makes the heat bearable, slightly.
At night, it is not under a great sky of stars or glowing pink clouds that I hunch under. Rather, I sleep with the sound knowledge of forgetfulness, and its luxuriant mist that hides and dissipates memory.
There is always the draught that blows overland, especially in such islands as where we live, and that is lost in the windbreakers of window panes and doorways, of sheets and dreamcatchers. Instead, we crouch and hunker into odd shapes snuggling for the missing warmth as we turn up the 
thermostat to chill and turn frosty the very air we gasp to burn our own heat.
There was a tiny stream which I was used to crossing, and because of my influence, enjoyed the going and comings as I pleased. That stream is now a torrent of passing events that I cannot wield over. That river now separates my whole being from the happy fields of friendship and companionship. I see the pasture on the other side: slightly green and ready almost for harvest. But on the desolate bank where I stand, the view is always good and out of reach.
"You got no fuckin' idea how bad it gets. I am not you... I wish I knew how to quit you."
It is with these thoughts that I confront my reality, and the sharp winds that knot my sails and hold me back against the shoreline. I cannot yet break free from the dark shade that glooms overhead, and race out again, into the afternoon heat.
(Above: atop the Acropolis Hill where the Parthenon stands, Athens - northwards, the small mount in the background is the famed Mt St. George, with its tiny chapel and Orthodox monastery crowning the summit; middle left and right: with June, horse-riding among the Pyramids at Giza, Cairo, Egypt; and below right: atop the highest mastaba at the Great Pyramids.)
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