A lighter world —
beneath the heavy tread
— - . _ . _ . - . — . - . _ . _ . - —
original writing and images by 
_ _ - - . . - . . — . . . — . . - . _ . - . . — . . . — . . - . . - - _ _
A lighter world —
beneath the heavy tread
________________________
Below my heavy tread — a mess of twigs,
A delicate and microscopic world
Soft-magnifies itself into my eyne,
Refined into the mystical mundane
By focus, softening into a blur —
A paintstroke of the fleeting poignancy
That follows all the lovers everywhere
With cold and humid contrast of the dawn,
With dew upon the plain, and on the lawn
Where once reposed perfection, held sublime
By arms now empty, fled to other clime
The spectre of warm beauty's innocence
Seen simpler still, now through another lens —
Through gratitude and sorrow for the loss
Of vision of exquisite light's emboss
About each strand of hair — wind-wispèd silk,
Each telling glance, more telling than the look
Of budding flow'r, of cirrus-stripe divine
Red-lit by dwindling page of solar book
Slow-winding towards a denouement in time
In which my density becomes refined,
In which that I behold no longer flees
From vision, but absorbs into the leaves
That from the withered branches of my arms
Are sprouting, and betray beguiling charms
More devious, for their more supple shape,
Affecting more, the less they make agape
A looker-on, a passer 'neath the trees
Whose boughs, though rigid seem, with every breeze
Oscillate and wend to current's bent,
Annihilate, illuminate the pavement
Where mess of twigs, and seeds, and moss, and mold;
Ants, and tree-cotton — concrete and silt
Languorously flaunt their greening-gold,
Far more majestic palaces a-gilt
By sparkling sun's coronannointing-ray
Than e'er in Rome or Ind were human-built
By shrewd-dissecting mind's sharp overlay —
Beneath the heavy tread of mortal way.
Words and images by Daniel Pendergraft,
created for HIVE on May 20, 2020.
