One night I found myself walking down the road with three huge wild bulls, but it's really about watching Haley's comet out of town during a full eclipse of the moon near the Australian mining town of Mount Isa. This is also a poem about the encounter. Photo and spec effects of me in Aus. in '86.
-- words: -- "The Feral Bulls of Mount Isa" --
As I traced the pinhole image of a partial eclipse of the sun, one day, by old Uluru Rock, I knew it had begun.
- And, soon it dawned upon my mind, as I sketched that afternoon, that, when it's fullness waxed around, eclipsed would be the moon.
- So I went to old Mount Isa, where the smoke-stack meets the sky, and lodged at the youth hostel and waited. Bye and bye,
- when the full moon lit the heavens on a certain sultry night, I knew the time was drawing near and I went to see the sight.
- I walked by furnace, one by one, of Isa's belching smoke; of copper and molybdenum; of silver in the choke.
- I walked nigh ten mile out of town, far from synthetic light and lay down in the outback dust to watch the sky that night. For it was 1986, and, raging in the sky, the hoary beard of Haley's was just then passing by.
- And, as the moon's light dimmed away by the shadow of the Earth, that comet lit my anxious eye as I lay there in the dirt.
- And then, returning through the town, walking beside a wall, I came upon a gap in it not that big at all. Presently out came three large bulls and prancing in a trot. I heard the music of their hooves; and I in quite a spot! For these magnificent creatures were of the feral type. I, privileged, then, walked with them in the moonlit sultry night.
- Or how to tell the feeling, or to describe the thought; or to relay in poetry what I was there then taught: We are a part of the universe; and part, then, of the whole. Let's roll our swag and loose the slag, for the World's beyond control. We try to use our money to measure what we've done, forgetting, then, what is for free, and think to buy our fun. --
Special effect were done using Adobe After Effects software.
Mount Isa, Australia, is home to one of the largest underground mines in the world, with one of the most immaculate safety records (at least back in the '80's when I was there), boasts an international community of naturalized Australians, one of the largest smoke stacks in the World, and is abundant in all sorts of precious metals and natural resources.
No comments:
Post a Comment