dissolution

Blessed is the morning star, lit with myth and circumstance. Blessed is the sharpened sickle moon, hanging like threat above the sleeping trees. Blessed is the raccoon clatter and the dog alarms. The bare limbs of trees reaching towards the next season, caught in the diffuse light of vigilance. The police prowl and the addict roll, the street filled and emptied again and again. Blessed is that profound absence, that ache we name divine.

I offer this promenade of wounded limb and tattered rags, this shamble of pain and endurance. I offer this bright burning, this rank smoke, these trailing ashes. The fire that marks, the smoke that falls, the ash that remembers. Hunger and thirst and the clambering notions of what comes next. This clumsy moment, bled of every hope, free of the slow dissolution of dreams.

Blessed is the world that devours, the world that sustains. Blessed are the scarred hills and the thoughtless architecture, the winding roads and the stilted breath of this penitent season. Blessed are the angels that deny us and the demons that would swallow us whole. Blessed are the trails of stars and the tracks of slugs, the shuffling footsteps of the mendicant, the hubris of each hallowed victory parade. All the words that claim, all the words loosed into this emptiness. This careful dawn bleeding into another faithless day.