greenburns

poppies, originally uploaded by camille94019.

I don't have a picture of Montara Mtn. It was fabulous. We drove, we hiked, we went up, we went down. It was drippy and misty. The flowers were out in force. The sage was fragrant. The anise was tasty. The poison oak was ubiquitous. The nettles were itchy. The vultures circled.

oh the vultures
huge
like giant bats
three wheeling on the warm updrafts
a dignified, restrained mummery on the green breast of the mountain
tilting, tipping
like watching
elegant pendulum bobs
on invisible strings
if only my undertakers
were so breathtaking.


the waves crashed. the cypresses swayed and were poetically contorted by the wind. They dropped many needles to make soft places to step. a private loo, more accepting than porcelain and brass. The grass was over our heads. swaying, dipping, caressing the face of the wind.

The wild lilies, the wild roses the evening primroses, the manzanita were all singing their praises to life. to god. the giant purple onion-things exploded like fireworks over the springy turf.

the peak was a blasted moor, with no visibility, we hunkered under the tick bushes and ate our food. we took our pictures by the "no loitering" signs. the cell phone tower generators hummed while we strained our eyes for signs of the 6 million people who lived below us.


the sticky monkey bushes were more orange blossomed than anything hanging on a gallery wall (mark rothko, eat your heart out). the hillside was more than green, it was ultra green, throwing more green into our faces than the sun could hurl through the fog. my face smarts from the green. i have a third-degree greenburn.

our clothes were invisible to the fingers of the wind... icy cold and wet... they found the warm moist nooks and hosed them down in a frigid shower. our bones took the brunt of the weather...

-----

Am reading a cool book. Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin. She is autistic and she writes about her experience, her symptoms and her career designing cattle chutes. Now I am looking at everything through cattle chute goggles. its illuminating. she designs cattle chutes to reduce the stress of the cattle and to calm them. I think everything should be designed like that. houses. schools. bedrooms. maybe that is too much trouble. maybe people and cows should just hang out in meadows and enjoy the grass.