Poetic Passages in Rainbow Arc of Fire: Worlds Beneath Us

Worlds Beneath Us begins with the impending demise of my cat Schnozz. I have had to put three of my cats to sleep in my nearly 20 years living in Denver. Each death was heartbreaking and even painful. For Schnozz and Miranda, it was cancer. For Sneezer, it was old age. He was 21-years-old. The following is the first chapter which, like a Greek Chorus, is intended to set the mood for the book.

Chapter One

Spring. In the midst of life bursting anew or renewing itself, when mares and colts, cows and calves, feast on the freshest of fields, nature welcomes alteration, adjustments with which all existence must contend. No matter how contrary, even mating birds attempt to fly strictly in tandem, no matter how perilous, in an aerial formation of soaring courtship.

This year in Colorado the seasons appear to have traded places, with winter alternately warmer than these many days now trailing the equinox, when the sun should hold a more effective sway. Yet the glowing orb groans along in labored passage, with all manner of warmer currents checked at a crossroads. Continuing snow and then rain showers chill the sinews and bones and branches that might have grown longer limbs by now, flowing forth well before this. The sloshing of distant oceans and the turbulence of far air streams consequently bury the high country again and again, yielding to fears that an inevitable runoff will produce flooding elsewhere, if not everywhere, downstream. Over-abundant blessings must inevitably lead to a curse, humanity sincerely believes.

Yet against these seemingly insurmountable odds, the living fabric seasonally furrows, row upon row, only barred now and then from branching prematurely. Opposing this burdened explosion of our communal being, death retains a privileged right to intervene, imposing a new balance for all mortal species.

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