He noticed on the high hill of the orchard

the changing space beyond the changing light,

He saw that space had changed to light and light

was all there was of place when place gave way

to the swift complacencies of thought

and to the grim noise words made in the mind

like the whirring of cicadas in the midday heat

on the high hill of an orchard at noon,

of the sibilance, the fricatives, the aspirations

of a man in thought in the high white light of noon,

just a man thinking, but not at all a thinking man,

who stands at no real height at all, in fact, but high enough

to catch a glimpse of distance out beyond the treetops,

beyond the weedy sublimations of the ground,

across the kind of distance thought must travel

like sunspot noises to bedevil all our careful messaging

in the brassy breath of noon upon a hill,

on this hill in particular – a hum from nowhere special.

x

x

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico, USA. Born in California in 1951, he was raised in Japan and Mexico. His work has recently appeared in journals across the US, Canada, The UK, Europe, and Israel. His first collection, Tarantula Season, is scheduled for release in 2023.