Barreling up out of the small, canyoned
mining town, the woman thought of death,
thought of suicide, thought of life.
She knew the trip to take an injured cat
through the Black Hills to the Veterinarian
was going to hurt her soul's penal depths.

The world, as a planet, is incomparable.
The mind, as a prison, is abominable.

The fluorescing vivid oranges of desert poppies,
with sun-burst yellows and dusky purples of companion
wild flowers, splashed the mountain slopes
and heights of stony cliffs with vibrancy,
mid-way in her journey. The need to absorb
all angles, aspects and variants of earth’s
rebirth, its gorgeous totality, its whole
simple beauty, collided and ricocheted
through her bullet-holed, battlefield mind.
Weeping, combined with gasps and moans of delight,
created a vortex of instability, of reverberating
agony of feeling alive, yet, deadened.

Life, as an entity, is incredible.
Spirit, as a jailer, is formidable.

The wealth of winter rains had painted
green’s growth on desert mountains and floors.
The browns of winter’s sleeping death had
dislodged landslides of muddy inner thoughts,
seesawing anxieties and insecurities in self.
The last few miles of rolling, billowing hills
clarioned its colored voice with such
utter picturesqueness, she whimpered, aching
to fragment herself into each and every bloom,
to become … completed, fulfilled, calm.
When she reached the cotton-farmed lands
of inhabited, freshly plowed fields, she sighed.

The mind, as a world, is remarkable.
The planet, as a prison, is inimitable.

Travelling back to her copper penitentiary,
far-off swells of golden-desert spring brought
thoughts of life, thoughts of death, and the wish
to live forever. The cat meowed with maddening
sympathy, as if it sensed her culpability.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 3/4/05