A Ruined Nature

[Brownlie]

 

In nestled trails where busts of bronze men perch
on their immortal placards at the head,
I had soon sauntered far away from the
incessant self-applause of nature’s famed
cascading blowhard as it crashed around.
It did not appear as sublime to me,
this feigned clapping of a stoic fall.
As, from the jagged cliff, violent seeming gallons
poured, stirring up a sweaty foam
from the illusion of a working human earth,
the whole theatrical performance
struck me with a  subreptitious rudeness.
Why you I cried amidst dumbfounded crowds
of fellow amblers lost in the lustful scene.
You pail dropping mass of still rapid awe,
I toddle not among this wide eyed brood,
They all cry with hunger through their teeth,
And you, you egg the bloody infant feast.
I will not suffer, stupefied as one
who holds a plastic bucket by the surf
and builds fake castles made of shifty sand.
You cannot tempt me with your inspired pail.
Nor will I break in goo goo ga gas
free of sense and lost to fitful rage.
Guffaws and stern harrumphs are all I offer you.
And then, as if I cried an honored curse
that the god Aeolis had heard and marked
with favor over supplicating praise,
a large zephyr rushed inside my chest
as I raised my head in high harrumph.
I was soon booed by all the clapping noise,
but jeered toward a more tempered joy
as I am, encased in quiet woods.