The Conscious Hills

The meme supplied by Writers Island was the one word Beguile

The dust of generations fills these hills.
It's blown by winds, but moves in ways that fill
the mind with awe - or would, were we aware
of how it shapes so many features here,
of how it isn't simply dust, how nothing
in this world is quite as simple as itself.
There's something there that's active on behalf
of us and what the world prescribes. It's just
as much alive as strontium. The dust
knows nothing of a half life, but survives
its scatterings and burials to form
itself again. It formed us once, as we
formed it, and it will form our heirs - but make
them unlike us. It draws and redraws blue-
prints, score on score, as do all things
of flesh - and those of granite, too. They do
it in the way they act, respond to this,
our world. How else did shape and movement come
about? How else did we reach consciousness?
Are we more conscious than the dust? Perhaps.
The difference is in the measure, not
the kind. We are beguiled to think there is
no consciousness. Without it is no chance
to be deceived - not even by ourselves.