In Memory

In Memory

Forms walk behind the sunset. A memorial to someone who fell off a cliff below is grounded in skittering leaves, below which trains slide and buckle against gravity's bend down a grave chute. He was fourteen years old when his body broke, bloody and bending into the sun-fried leagues of trees, interrupted in places by oval cow fields and rippled ponds floored by mud ridges. 

Miles below the earth's surface and hills, vagrants ride in handcars in caverns choked with quartz crystals. Ice bells float in the rarefied violet vapor toward space. A green snake flickers and curves, wandering the the trail, underneath the cavern or ritual place in the cliff, fire light beating on stone-like protruding branches, rose hips, moss farms, rock heights flooded with droning highway light. Squirrel kidneys hover on bark glass, puttering cremains, paths leading through crepuscular spores.

JF

September 9, 1993

Photo by me. City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 2007.