Saturday, December 19, 2009

the parable of the broom

The work of a push broom on cold pavement, the work of a lawn rake on a sea of leafs, the labors bereft of love that long ago stopped costing blisters. The sweep of a tidal gray sky, the geese honking their way somewhere warmer, children bundled in their games of shrieks and scrapes. Saturday morning traffic, swift and idle, full of stung intent as it careens around the blind corner. Something of the gutter in this life. Something of the weight and the fall in these hours passing by.

Coffee comes after sunset, while I mix my potions and my media. Television shoves some romance past me as I pick at a paper, finish a puzzle in ink. The dogs fed, the cat condescended to, the porch light on and the neighbors keeping to themselves. Weather forecasters mention a little rain here and there. The aches swaddle this drift of bone and momentum, a spike, a moan, a clearing of the throat as the mind grows cloudy. It is the alchemy left between mirrors, these moods and hungers. Vision growing sharper as the shadows come home to roost.

The labor of the blank page and the key stroke, the labor of synthetic souls and inscribed spells unfurling, the work of a life of determined omission dragging chains beneath these dreams. The sway of unseen stars, vast conspiracies of desperate passions colliding with the impartial substance of creation. Poems and stammered sagas, the comical vanity of artless art enduring despite oblivion. The secret of life left to the spaces in between the telling, something about style that imparts the insubstantial with the unsettling heaviness of fate. Something gracious in this dedication to detail, despite its cracks and devils. Something of the river in the consistency of all this change.

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