Tom Clark writes at least one poem every day. Today, he wrote one for me.
Cascade
Looking at this picture I have just lately taken of this waterfall
can’t be compared with looking at my earlier picture
of this waterfall
or with being at the waterfall itself,
the philosopher king mused.
At the bottom, you get covered in spray and the rocks are slippery.
It’s wonderful.
Very loud.
Looking at the picture of the waterfall,
you miss all this,
you miss the rushing sound of the water,
you miss the thunderous reverberation of the torrent through the gorge,
you miss the rainbow colours and halos and the diaphanous light,
you miss the delirious sensation of being enveloped in the cascade,
you miss the vertiginous feeling of being tumbled headfirst into the chasm,
you miss the delicious feeling of the foamy backwash upon your body,
you miss the euphoric impression of a water spirit world whooshing and swooshing about you,
though of course if you’ve actually been there
and experienced all these things
even just the once
you can later summon them up in memory
and while that is not as good as the real thing,
said the philosopher king to himself,
it is something.
ⓒTom Clark
Nobody’s ever dedicated a poem to me before. I’m very happy about it.
A Bad Guide 
Jolly good. Does Tom do requests? If so, how about his knocking out a poem on your wonderful dancing goats? They’re still in my mind’s eye.
AJP, a brilliant collaboration, if we do say so ourselves.
(You got to have all the fun, though.)
The post turns out wonderfully in your hands, here, where there is all that excellent verisimilitude, veracity, vigour and vim.
The interesting philosopher king protagonist figure here speaks to us before a slide show of the very waterfalls of which he speaks.
I hoped he would seem comfortably wise, a deeply sensitive man whose life has been touched and changed by waterfalls.
He makes no claim on us, in fact is simply talking to himself.
Dancing goat requests make my day. As it happens, dearieme, it took all available powers of self restraint to refrain from characterizing the philosopher king as a goatish forest figure, gamboling naked through the spray. Of the waterfall that is.
Naked? When I’m gambling, I wear evening dress. I meant to say those are awesome pictures of Alaska you put up.
Brilliant collaboration.
Laozi reading the pictureless e-mail notice about the post about the sights and pictures and once existed pictures of the cascade
名可名
非常名。
looking at the cascade mists up every other sight
the sound of the cascade extinguishes every other sound –
my picture of the cascade is the setting of all the journey
a picture by the friend is a window to his inner cascade
a picture by him that does not exist any more
includes every picture and eclipses every sight
it is the mother of the ten thousand cascades
“AJP, a brilliant collaboration, if we do say so ourselves.”
Yes, of course you can say that!
(But next time naked :-)
What a horrible oversight.
Yes. Studiolum dedicated a post to me, however (in Hungary, I’m Megkoronáz A.J.P.).
This is a blog for all the family, so Julia will just have to imagine us naked.
HAHAHA!
You’re right, I’m sorry.
“A XXX Guide”
“A Bad XXX”, more like.
LOL!
A way of going <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tourists_swimming_at_Victoria_Falls.jpg"<naked over the Falls, for the whole family.
An even better way of going naked over the Falls, for the whole family.
I would only go over the Victoria Falls fully-dressed.
“Dr. Crown, I presume?”
That’s right. Wearing one of these.
lovely poem and lovely waterfall. I want to leap in.
I’ll bet. And very nice to hear from you, mab.