The Escape Velocity Of A Rorschach Sunset

I.
As the fiery half-eaten orb
melts farther into the mountains,
the heart shudders in astonished jolts.

A gilded feast of morphing shadows tempts
the pattern-hungry brain to arrange
dozens of weather-beaten points
into monstrous faces of jagged rock.

Vectoring like a maniacal dragonfly
the eyes construct (and deconstruct)
tensile bridges of silken meaning.

The shifting boundary of the rugged terrain
slips in and out of focus;
the cerebral cortex strains
like an under-powered microscope
scanning for a fistful of wind-strewn prions.

As night sounds alight
from their distant cliff perches
the velvet handcuffs of night
ease onto the day’s dumbfounded wrists.

II.
Right now,
on the opposite side of the planet,
day swallows night.

But here,
as the crackling firelight
concedes to the ashen skies,
the entire mountainside heaves
like a labyrinthine lung expanding and contracting,
expanding and contracting until finally,
in a subconscious spasm of breath-stopping resolution,
a flood of imagination floats perspective higher:

twin spires spike skyward
like the saber-toothed fangs
of an 800 pound Smilodon populator,
conjured larger than life
to stalk the freshly darkened horizon.

III.
It was as if,
over the millennia,
the beast had evaded extinction
while scaling the mountain peaks
from the bottom up.

As its rock-ribbed limbs
slothfully stumbled skyward,
an avalanche of tumbling stones
lazily colonized the landscape below.

And now,
the backbreaking journey complete,
its insatiable jaws rise
with the curtains of night
to prey upon the starry skies.