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Saturday 23 April 2011

Crisis on the Savannah


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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Acacia_Bild1086.jpg

Acacia trees in the Sahel sub-Saharan savanna ecoregion, Gourma, Burkina Faso: photo by Marco Schmidt, 9 August 2006


..................“I must complain the cards are ill-shuffled till I have a good hand.” — Swift


"Believing something will happen
.......Because I don’t want it to
And that some other thing won’t
.......Because I do --” I wailed to the dealer --
“This is desperation.” “Yeah?” he said. But then by
.......Your graceful lines, your lioness’ mane,
Your heat as you returned from
.......Your day in the jungle, you relieved me from
What in myself was desperate,
.......What even now insists on wishing
And believing. Still in the sheen of finely-breathing
.......Blond hair that covers you,
By the flashing way you move from tree
.......To tree, and from room to room,
Making it a bright full house,
.......I find at least the light to see the cards I am dealt.





La Gran Sabana
(Venezuela): photo by Inti, 9 December 2008



TC: Crisis on the Savannah, Bolinas, 1972, from When Things Get Tough on Easy Street, 1978

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most anything we can do to enlarge our experience and increase our possibilities beyond

“Yeah?” he said.

which sometimes seems like the background noise of the universe, is good with me, especially this.

It is stunning to see photos of places in the world that I wonder if I'll ever see in person. At one point, I wanted to travel everywhere, but then misfortune befell us (actually, fortunately, it passed and left us alive), and extinguished our desire for "exotic travel".

TC said...

Exactly, the background noise of the universe is the dealer.

Yes, how wonderful indeed to travel somehow to all those places where one might wish to be for just that one neverending moment -- beyond every petty personal crisis that ever fugited through the worldwind of the tempus on the savannah.

A residual static wanderlust seems to be the motor driving these nocturnal photosearches down the road to... what, I sometimes wonder? permanent total evasion of reality?

But these two savannahs, ah, Curtis, any genie who so wished could wrap up my imagination in a flying carpet and whisk me away to them right now. No tickets, no passports, no portfolio.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Acacias in the Sahel sub-Saharan savanna ecoregion (against cloudless blue sky), acacia across the street (against clouds), just back from the white mountains again, where it was still snowing (and snowing). . . .


4.23

grey whiteness of clouds above shadowed
green of ridge, motionless green leaves
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

noting particularly “one so,”
relation to one other

namely this thing, by which
what goes on in, only

sunlit white peak below grey–white sky,
blue jay on pine branch across from it

TC said...

Acacia against clouds or a cloudless blue sky among green leaves in the mountains, sunlit white peak below grey–white sky, blue jay on pine branch across from it and morning cars going by over the twitter from the redwood of small birds who thought it was going to rain today, and have been surprised by the sun.

Thanks Steve for the light and colours of the world once more.

aditya said...

Tremendous poem Tom. Amazing poise and everything just so great!!