intermittence

Through the kitchen window I can see the crows palaver, roosting on the swaying wire, plotting their next crime. The clouds stall and flow, a dusk struck foreshadow of the coming storm. The workings of the weather, the conspiring of crows-- two small things that sustain me. Two more reasons in the plus side column amid all this ruckus and calumny of life. The beauty of silk black wings, the ragged calls, the harsh laughter. Episodes and incidence, treasures that linger though much of the splendor has burnt to ash and ember. Things that manage to remind me that I am still smitten with this world, long after all the jiltings and the indifference have weighed in on this sorry husk. It doesn't take much to tip the scales either way.

The usual black coffee blues, with the stinging of timely wounds to sing high harmony to the typical retinue of ache and complaint. I blow these ghosts of steam from the inky heat of another cup, hoping that the momentum gained from the ritual will out-weigh the indolence favored by my heart. Each sip, each swallow, that small good thing that the brusque baker gave those grieving parents in that Carver story. Listening to fuzzy guitar and plaintive voices, going through the motions in so many pitiful little ways. Giddy with pain and habit, silly with grief and a thousand unbidden appetites, I write these narrow lines. I fill up some of that unending empty that I fear and adore.

The wind is a little colder, and I regret only having a t-shirt between me and that demand for equilibrium. A chill sets goose-flesh on my arms and shoulders, momentarily silencing the clamor of all these cuts and scrapes. The light seems to billow away, some subtle unseen motion, my eyes glassy with air wicked tears. Something trickling down my cheeks and nose, a sense of warmth. Some distant constellation, viewed for the first time mindful of the continuity between myth and mistake, elements suspended in the deep amber of distant time. Some flicker of change, an urgent leaning towards balance. The book keeping of the temporary and the enduring, a watermark of unspeakable beauty witnessed among a litany of lost and broken things.