Into the Mist
Angelic glowing presences haunt a backdrop of rural, unfettered landscapes. Artwork by Female Pentimento, for COEVAL Magazine. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
The base of any journey into the natural world is, in many regards, its most fruitful,
Given that it is here the groundwork for safe passage is laid.
Yet, any deviation that occurs from the path envisaged is serendipitous—
Ameliorating the awe of the experience through physiological arousal—
Provided conditions are sufficient and one’s needs are tenderly razed.
It is all contingent upon appraisal;
After all, unfamiliarity can just as easily bring fear to incubate in our most basal states—
The soul, at its most vulnerable, housed in semi-permeable membrane,
Raring for immersion and the forthcoming escapade.
It is best, then, to formulate no preconceptions when venturing into fogfall, and let the vapour approach, proving itself transformative.
For gaseous forms reveal to us the undertow of our lives,
Swept up in currents of the immediate, purified.
Unlike dust, fumes, or miasma pluralized,
Aqueous smog isn’t culpable for the dissolution of our physique,
Or the behemoth city’s retreat,
Nor irritant or unbecoming,
Under the jurisdiction of vegetation in a parliament of trees.
Commencement along this trajectory is far from benign,
Motion with intent down desire lines, that—
Propelling us forward—
Contribute to a cumulative vestige of wayfarers prior, present and gone:
Mud arduously toiled and churned, long trudged-on,
The impermanence of actions anchored to matter that is essentially primordial.
It is an incremental legacy, enduring, that will hopefully live on,
Should we be no longer of this plane to see it,
With the way of our rampant, egoistic anthropocentrism,
Be it exploitation and dominion the human hallmark:
A nihilistic far cry from receipt of otherworldly grace and absolution.
Under cover of branches, we outsiders start to shift, bow and break,
Feeling corporeal figures intruding on blanket space,
With more than just twigs snapping
But cloak-and-dagger, a depreciable sigh
Is let out in the grooves of our intricately laden, internal interface—
Which, attuned to pylons in the distance,
Monumental in stature, destined to outlast our all-too-rigid, physically constrained shape,
Is non-beholden to biological properties,
Deftly weaving a channel of electricity interlaced.
Call it an attractive core in an otherwise expulsive, repellent world state.
Thus, take me to latitude, elevation and the point of no return, beyond this realm.
Self-actualizing, an orb provides balm and salve
For my outstretched body which, weary, yearns,
To see more than mere rubble sculpted over, and inward baggage reclaimed.
Align my path and set my choosing free,
Stretched across perilous, yet seraphim terrain.
For, in longitude, I wish to see glades,
And in interstitial zones, wires may too operate,
But let them not spoil the landmass at altitudes I seek to embrace.
Festering inside, notionally,
The idea of the self and the sublime, converging in an immaterial place.
Of course, I speak in abstraction of an exemplary outing.
This journey doesn’t exist; in reality, it is not one,
But many experiences expounded across a lifetime:
A suffusion of moments,
Compacted into a self-rending, cathartic narrative,
Unburdened and extolled.
