| The Descent of Man Thomas Hally The stream promenades atop smooth stones swirling past observant flora and fauna, funneling to a flume, and pours into the open mouth of meandering waters ahead… The river churns through a rain forest verdure to the sounds of avian “Avés” as wings flap in clamorous flutter disturbing leaves, trees, and predators. Man Himself is not the least of these. A noisy storm reaches the growling fluvial giant and gives vent to her personality as wind sashays through tree tops, snapping branches with the eerie murmuring of a jungle's spooky silence and a tenebrific night… Dark nimbi mask the Lunar Disk as he opaquely observes, with his curious smile, goings on down low… Man and Moon witness and feel the sottish sky spewing down in speeding bullets an unyielding progression through the selvatic canopy and onto the bare feet of the Solitary Native plodding the muddy wilds floor… Then Man, River, and Jungle abruptly come to a cliff’s edge, a near stalemate for one and a dare for Jungle and River alike… So Man, oh so clever, grasps supine tree trunks, simian style, inching astride near a cascading waterfall to deafening screams—like artillery volleys. Man suddenly disappears. The cataract descends and splashes up headland's pedestal crackling in strident gunshots, splitting eardrums, while hurling Man beside ghostly brows and prows of decapitated pirates and splintered brigantines akin into close-cropped stalagmites and the open jaws of Tethys and Oceanus of many, many nights like this so long ago… Holocausts of cumbersome clouds slide above, booming, as they electrically open and brusquely scrub the ocean’s surface, like thumb and index finger unzipping Neptune’s underbelly casting Man, Fisherman and Sailor fathoms below… The tide has ebbed and Man and the tempest have died—far from the shore and far from home. The stream promenades atop smooth stones swirling past observant flora and fauna, funneling its way to a flume, and pours into the open mouth of meandering waters ahead… |
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