poetry by Ashley Suzanne Musick – Wilderness Interface Zone

Darkness Descends by Ashley Suzanne Musick

A chill permeates the atmosphere
as the golden orb of the sun slides down the crimson
firmament towards the cusp of heaven and earth. Its fading rays
illuminate in marvelous tints of pallid yellow, dazzling
pink and intense orange the edges of the steel blue clouds.
In the sky opposite baby blue fades to navy.
As the sun slips below the horizon, a copper sliver emerges from
the earth’s other edge. All along the rim of the world
white and orange lights shiver in the quivering air.
Slowly, in this corner of earth, the curtain of night is drawn,
sucking colors from surroundings, transforming the world
into bland silhouette. Overhead, in the dark shroud, stars,
far-off beacons in the vast void, arrange into patterns marking seasons.
Expressionless sentinels, they look upon this sole home of life
while humanity on this side of the world gazes back as darkness descends.

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Ashley Suzanne Musick was born in Fountain Valley, California, on February 26th, 1989, and raised and homeschooled in Anaheim. In 2010, she moved to southwest Kern County, where she lives and works on a farm and writes in her spare time. To see more of her work, go here and here.

The photo is titled “Ocaso en el lago de El Soto (MÃ³stoles, Madrid).” Its creator, Manuel Parada LÃ³pez de Corselas, released the image into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Monster by Ashley Suzanne Musick

Through the atmosphere, without a whisper,

Approaches the unseen monster before

Proclaiming its presence with a shrill

Eardrum-rupturing howl and the icy bite of its breath,

Pummeling individual humans and other large creatures,

Tossing around like toys minute items,

Tearing tarps off the objects they protect

And casting a fine film of dirt into the air,

Diluting sunlight and blinding every eye

As the monster makes its way across the ground …

The wind has arrived.

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Modern Hebrew by Ashley Suzanne Musick

In the tar-like black sky
structures float like ghosts
through the illumination from bulbs
hovering like flying saucers over
the road. No heavenly
luminaries accompany me on this lonely journey.
Only those cones of light brighten the route ahead.
Nevertheless, I must persist.
I am a modern Hebrew
fleeing the Egypt of the office, escaping to
the Promised Land of the field. There,
as I stand on nude ground,
a lunar face and stellar eyes will look
upon me from the depths of the universe
and remind me of the Creator of this grandeur.

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When I See by Ashley Suzanne Musick

That industrious black-banded yellow worker, the bee, and a dragonfly soar swiftly, silently through the sky

The glowing rosy crescent rising slowly after the iridescent sunset and the stars glinting like jewels amidst a sky as black as tar

The fresh greenery mushroom every spring and the rolling hills with their lush grassy frills

The sun shielded by a cloud as if by a shroud, illuminating its edges with its beams, and the multi-hued glow of a rainbow €”

When I see the magnificence of my environment–

I witness

The talent of the Great Artist.

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Ashley Suzanne Musick was born in 1989 on the twenty-sixth of February in the California city of Fountain Valley and raised and home-schooled in Anaheim. In 2010 she moved to southwest Kern County, where she currently works on a farm and writes in her spare time.