Marvellous imagery Arthur.
The only query I have is *teeter a path*. I see what you mean, but would
*teeter on a path* be better.
Keep up the good work.

Roger


----- Original Message -----
From: "arthur seeley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 8:46 AM
Subject: New sub: The Rock ( A haibun) Rewrite


The Rock ( A haibun)

        The road glitters in the Cretan sun, above it mirages quiver and
shimmy. A path forks off  to dip through the gloomy underpass, from there it
trails through back ways towards Stavromenos of the white church and the
dusty supermarket.

Beyond the reach of bees
a wilt of dying flowers.
Hum of passing traffic.

            I step from cool shade into the hammering sun to stand upon the
anvil of old roads, stopped by heaps of debris. Away from the main road the
silence is intense,
the air rich with the soil’s vapours.

The church tower looms
through a stand of tall pines.
Ants debate bone or seed.

           Men have left this heaped rubble, scooped from the earth to leave
a drain that guides winter storms and spring's swift melt seawards. The sun
pins me in the dust that rises like smoke where I walk. The road  bends then
stops at the edge of the drain, a litter of rocks. I teeter a path where
there is no path.

White dust coats all;
leg, arm and thistle leaf.
Flicker of a passing swallow.

  The shadow of an old woman, black as a beetle, turns at the corner of her
house and scuttles into the shade of lemon trees and vines. A tethered goat,
one horn shattered ragged, dances on small feet, bleats and butts at my
intrusion into the lull of his day. Cicadas stir, call cave on my shadow
from the dry grasses of the verge.
This is not the time to be out. Locals sprawl and sweat in sleep or potter
under lemon trees, closeted in shade or flutters of cool.
I am a mad dog, loitering to savour the stink of old goat, listening to the
choir in the grass, under a noonday sun.

My eyes weep in the reek
of smoking rubbish.
The mountains bulk behind.

            One rock in all that rock; a thin line of fracture. It is no
bigger than my head and round as a fruit.  Its rough skin pocked by its
descent down the centuries. I part it as I would a cut melon.
          First light floods to illuminate dazzling striations, set there by
ancient silts, laid down by the run of lost rivers and the sift of forgotten
seas, brought here from a time before Minoan myth and legends of Santorini;
sudden as  lightning, thrilling as untrodden snow.

The goat’s bell chimes flat
 as he shakes his beard.
A fly tells beads of my  sweat


           I view, from my Colombian mast, a new world of gold and purple
lands, whorls of ochre and lilac, painted deserts and umber prairies, open
like an unread book in my hands.

Pale in the day sky
the moon drops into the sea.
A curtain flutters and falls back.