October 17, 2008
Thursday Morning, On My Walk.
Thursday morning, on my walk,
I passed two trees, and between them
was fog,
frosting the land behind it
as if it were ice.
A red sun sat in a branch.
Below that, framed perfectly,
a flaming bush.
Then I walked too far,
and it was gone.
April 10, 2008
The Green Land.
Elise Manning walked out onto the deck of the cruise ship, tugging her coat closed around her. It was a brilliant Antarctic morning; Elise was glad she’d come on this cruise. She’d wanted to take a vacation – how many people could brag about visiting Antarctica’s coast for theirs? It was the only exotic place left, really.
Glancing at the icy, rugged coast, Elise smiled. She bent down for a second to polish the lenses of her binoculars, then looked back out at the continent before her.
It was green.
Startled, Elise fumbled for the binoculars, barely able to focus them with her trembling hands. What had been the stark, frozen coastline of the world’s last continent was now a lush, verdant land, dominated over all by one giant … tree.
Elise lowered her binoculars, but she could still see it clearly; the tree was massive. Roots ran aboveground, the size of mountain ranges. In the distance, an immense trunk rose to the sky. Looking overhead, Elise could see huge branches spreading out over the land, impossibly far above. Something sparkled amid those distant branches; still trembling, Elise raised her binoculars once more.
It was a waterfall.
The branches were covered not in leaves but in mountains, seas, rivers… Some of that water trickled over the edges of branches, to fall to places below. Those waterfalls look like tiny trickles, thought the astonished woman, but if I’m seeing this right, they’re far higher than any mountain… What am I seeing? How am I seeing this?
Birds shrieked nearby; a wave rocked the boat. Elise stumbled. Clutching the railing, looking out toward the coast again, she saw that it was icy again.
She never mentioned the vision to anyone. She certainly never told anyone that, for the rest of the trip, the ghostly image of an impossible tree hung over the land.
December 30, 2007
Maybe (Travel Guide).
Maybe if you go far enough, you’ll find places that either appear to be ruins of a civilization or just an empty, pristine location.
Maybe crossing out of the District to the north, you’ll run across a valley with a river at some ill-defined point, and you’ll find a ghost town near the valley’s mouth, with an empty, marbled university standing across the river.
Maybe farther north still, you’ll find an icy, windswept, walled fortress and, incongruously, a fertile green plain next door.
Maybe, veering south across some unmeasured expanse of sea, you’ll come across some henge-spotted islands, one with empty castles still bearing red dragon pennants, the other dotted with hollow hills, and across a little stretch of icy sea, there will be the sunken ruins of some gaudy city.
Maybe further south, the continent loses itself in a lifeless forest, made mostly of trees but partly of bare pikes, and more southerly still you’ll find sunny hills covered with olives and exotic fruits, and split by five rivers.
Maybe, if you go west a bit, you’ll find a series of strange castles, each more fantastic than the last, half in ruins, and veering south again, you’ll find arid steppes dotted with monumental gates and complex burrows.
Maybe, if you sweep west overland, staying near the salty sea, you’ll find the crumbling remains of brick cities, out of which rise perfect ziggurats, and further you’ll find a stretch of great walled cities and fortified islands, and further still you’ll find temples and pyramids inlaid with the faces of half-human creatures.
Maybe, if you sweep back east a bit to a dune-covered, desolate peninsula, you’ll find a thousand rotting pillars jutting out of the desert sand, and a trinket or two if the wind blows right.
Maybe, if you go far to the south, beyond all reasoning, you’ll find great stone formations jutting like teeth from the ocean floor, and a green, warm land where by all rights only ice should be, with great black mountains rising in the distance.
Maybe, if you veer north from there in the correct direction, you’ll eventually run across a tropical rainforest and an arid, rocky desert, and between them, a lifeless city on a lake, and then maybe, if you turn east and go north, you’ll find yourself back at Glass Washington, and you’ll find a dozen newer patches of land in the meantime.
