the favorite hour

The clock is counted down, the day tumbles over, it all begins again. Sleeping windows, drawling light. The finger traced faces, the wounds of thoughtless rumor, that faintest trace of burning bridges. All the stars hang heavy on the shadowed limbs, such subtle structures as are witnessed in these measured moments from the gear spun cusp. The latticework of familiar constellations, the groove worn into your tongue from all these alibis.

It is something savored in its absence, that lingering remembrance of flavor so lingual and abstracted. The slavish rituals of repetition wearing through the tapestry to reveal small truths. The teething heart, the tattered soul, the starving hands, and the cunning eye. The work of living seeming so clear when all the reasons finally subside. The weight of hesitation, the empty husk of movement, the tug and tether of muscle and bone. Breathing in these seething differences. A rush of blood, a hint of speed in the periphery.

How like flight this crush of substance. How like rising this lasting fall. Heavy in this deep inertia, feeling the migrations of heat and loss from animal core to the levity of atmosphere. Words all a-tangle, hope too much a stranger to talk to about anything but the enduring hour, and the vagaries of the weather. That too familiar feeling, the world spinning on without.