I
saw the jeweled insight;
I remembered whirligigs
on the hidden waterfall pond
which Robert Erich Eder showed me,
and which I attempted with my sons
to visit at Alum Rock Park, Eastside San Jose,
to visit on our 1992 visit to California.
But Signs warned of sink holes
which had opened with recent earthquakes,
and passage on the trail after the Tee
was blocked both ways with Official Signs.
On the way back a large Black
Darkling Ground Beetle aimed its ass
At our faces and threatened attack
With its noxious scent gland
Whose fluid can blind a predator's sight ...
Conan and Nathan were enthusiastic that it
waived from one set of eyes to the next
TO THE NEXT ... showing full cognizance
of our individual presences and location!
The ripples before the water's plunge were
nearly fixed by submerged rocks, REEder
remarked, "Look here! I insert my hand
and the surface is changed, but only locally -
See Downstream, before the Water's Plunge?!
It is the same as it was! It is such with time ...
we are temporary distortions of a river,
which will always resume its course ..."
After that pronouncement neither of us spoke
for an eternity, as I contemplated his words,
which ring in my mind - or at least their meaning,
as the exact words may have been changed by
my memory - until this day ...
