Image Etched

Those images that one can see but for only a fleeting moment can be indelibly etched into the eye of the mind.

A particular stretch of WA 129 descending down into the little town of Asotin, WA was narrow, twisting, and demanding full driver attention.  But I rounded a hairpin curve and could see straight ahead of me over to  the next ridge.   What I quickly recognized as tomb stones standing in stark relief against a brilliant cobalt sky were indeed tomb stones.

Another sharp corner was quickly approaching, but my eye flirted momentarily upward to the right.  

The canopy cover and the silhouette images of mourners standing beneath.  Almost beyond perception, positioned overhead,  the chalky whiteness of a waxing gibbous moon.  The Old Man up there overseeing the transition of yet another being planted on his naked butt-cheek  of a  barren bluff overlooking the entrance to his Hell's Canyon.  

Mourners.  Silhouettes.  Living symbols of the dead who haven't yet died.  

A snake of a river flowing below. Deceptively tranquil, emptying the guts of a hell of a canyon.  Letting jet skies pollute in a trinity of ways.

Perhaps the dead saw that requisite flash of light at the moment of passing.  

The look through the vagina of his new mother into the next world. 

Only the depths of Hell's Canyon would know.

I turned the next corner.  

Image etched.