Thursday, December 29, 2011

nocturn or nocturne

The hour is early, the sky already given up for gray. It is a time of kitchens and electric lights, of dinner plates and piles of lies. Families entangled like the rat king's tails, gnashing and writhing away in the usual style. Ordinary forms and trying exchanges, the lives lost to strangled chance and surrendered roads. Here it is still, a sort of formalism made from gathered books and the unyielding attentions of dust. Here it is quiet, just that hint of music, the morning songs of night birds. Barking dogs and car alarms blow reveille, calling out to the army of roofs and fences.

The roads lay down just where you left them last, stretching farther than perspective would allow. Running through field and over hill, reaching from town to town and from light to light. Asphalt poured all across the scenery, travel spilled all over the map. They are always coming for you, and always running away. The days savored and those despised all wander off to die, leaving only notions and past tense as company.

Night settles down to stay, asking very little and taking less. The reckoning of weather, the weight of an unsettled sky. The drizzling of incidentals, background noise and inevitable collision. The mismatched parts and the missing pieces all whisper away, like prayer escaping a church yard or music falling from the heavens. Ring your bells, fire off that respectful salvo, blow the last solo of the day. Share every confusion you can. Something will arise, nocturn or nocturne, to serve the absent day.

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