Camp Indianola March
Stare at a wall long enough
and it reveals itself.
The Flip Side of Camp Indianola
(during sesshin)
Doors open themselves and shut,
invisible fingers rattling the knobs,
the opposite of “good” children,
unseen but heard.
The giant fireplace of stones,
islands in the rough lagoons of mortar.
Faces rising from the rocks–
a British colonial in Kenya,
thickly mustached,
sherry-reddened nose;
a buzzard’s gaping jaw;
Saint Theresa in a sad but fearful vision,
dark eyes and the open “O” of her mouth
emerging
from the slant of a great ape’s skull.
In the lone white rock
a man’s long Gaulic nose,
Elizabethan mane–
the one face that doesn’t change
even when the light shifts
the night inside the day.
–Sibyl James