Phil Evans
that triggers the wondering of mind, the
wandering of thought.
That sound so new it leaves a trace
through background noise, or that path
through wilderness that makes me
question what went before, whose only
evidence of existence is the persistence of
the spoor they leave behind.
Or the sign though subtle, that still
appears faintly out of place and catches my attention,
distracts me from my
intention to pass through unhindered by
sideways glances at other, and my mind
stumbles over the multitude of patterns
that will become my lover.
Adherence to purpose is rare- my mind
wonders and wanders and my feet follow.
Intention and direction is lost as I open my
heart, bare my soul, as I explore my world,
spiraling in until my attention is:
-contained within a puddle of water, held
captive by fractal boundaries, that
intimate, chaotic dance of complexity and
simplicity, echoes of limitless shorelines,
objects sorted by wind and rain, laws of
physics that twist and distort without
thought of the feast for my imagination
laid before me like a banquet, surrounding
me like a blanket of wonder, around me
and through me with every breath I take.
-or carried beneath the Earth by the
endeavor of an ant, her ceaseless energy
passed from generation to generation
leaving as her legacy soils of another sort,
covering with gentle persistence the
treasures of an earlier time.
-or bound to the transitory patterns left
in the sand by the branches of the
beach wattle beating time to last
night’s windstorm that brought no rain,
but the roil of the universe makes ephemera
of us all.
I seek the wonders that lie hidden
in plain view, not there for me, not
waiting for you but in their own place,
and at their own time.
Lake Tyers has already written her
Almanac, millennia future and past.
We cast our nets in her waters, on her
lands, through her forests and we
catch fleeting glimpses that trickle
through our fingers as we search for
meaning, as we seek to give voice to
that which speaks to us without words,
(stirs within us), as we strive to give
substance to silvered flashes of
inspiration, and so we construct our
artifacts as best we can,
ornamentation that tells the story of us,
here, now.
There will never be another me, or
you. No-one else will ever see this
world the way that each of you do.
No one else can see through our eyes
but that is where the beauty of
discovery lies as others see not what
we saw, but what we were inspired to
create and perhaps those eyes are
then encouraged to join us and open
wide, to see around corners, and
through obstacles, to slide beneath,
between, beside, inside, to feel their
own connection to place and time.
To absorb and digest the mundane
and create sublime interpretations that
inspire and retrain everyone’s senses
to see and hear and smell and feel that
which has always been here, but
hidden from us by the buildup of
everyday dust and grime on
our windows to the world. Wash that away
and expose the perception and
distortion through which each of us
experience our world because it is
precisely that perception and that
distortion that is our uniqueness.
None of us can have prior knowledge
of our creative, constructive,
community trigger but, you know, I
figure we keep plucking at strings and
blowing on horns and banging on
drums, and from the cacophony,
rhythms and melodies and harmonies
will emerge; a discordant, chaotic,
ecstatic, wonderful human symphony.