Walking the Labyrinth Among Glass Shards
Cactus Joe’s Nursery, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Visited on June 25, 2022.
She contemplates the pile of blue rainbow glass.
She chooses a rock from the pile.
She holds it. She puts it down.
She chooses a different rock.
She holds it. She puts it down.
She chooses a different rock.
Mounds of rainbow glass, rows of artificial sunflowers, stone benches.
A feeling now this rock now they belong to one another.
We pass the succulents in formation.
Surrounded by the material to fashion desert landscapes.
On the head of a young cactus, a tuft of white hair.
Touch me and I’ll hurt you, the cactus squeaks.
Decorations, you provoke a lament I have no home to situate you.
Joshua tree: headache worn down hungover otherwise fine.
Blotched lizard the color of shade under a bench.
I enter the labyrinth, finally, shadows with me.
We are heedful of our time here.
I am reluctant to walk too slow or too fast in case I remember something.
I am afraid to hear myself speak to myself but that’s why I came.
I am afraid this is a waste of time, that I will hear nothing at all.
When you reach the center, what do you encounter?
Reality: nowhere left to go the way you came.
On the way out, express your lamentations over what’s manifest unmanifest.
I am tempted to take short cuts, step over the rocks, which are outlines not borders.
I’m usually desperate to hear something but not today.
Today I soak in the sun. I draw from the water in my reserve.
This circumspect feeling toward feeling is like breathing, surpassing all my expectations.
Near the labyrinth, a chapel, doors locked.
A wedding venue, hungry for prayers.
A labyrinth is a net, a fishbowl.
We are each to another, even after.