caught

The stars flicker and vanish, reborn again with each sway of leaf and limb. The light is left behind in bleary eye and fitful memory, those maps of constellations. Those skies littered with satellites and tiny wings. Swarms of mosquitos buffet and drift, following each whispered hint of blood. They descend trails of breath and sweat in silent hunger, glints of instance, sparks of life. Every sliver a gem, every being a spark.

We walk the earth for our given portions. We work our angles, toil along in our seething skins. Tangled in promises, given no guarantees, we grieve and conspire and wrestle for our saints and lies. We honor our deepest fears and distant gods, rewriting the story again and again and again. In a world of wonders, we step on every line and crack.

There was this moment, cool blue and golden. There was this moment, stuck in the throat of dawn. A bumblebee lit almost incidentally by the line of the horizon and the last dapplings of night floated for a moment, caught between fall and flight. It flickered out of sight, on some urgent mission above the gravel and high weeds. But for a moment there was this dense entanglement of distant elements, the false star of Venus and the shine of water in the sky. The bee glittering in the colors of dawn, everything woven together in their shed trajectories. This sea of strangers adrift in the work of the world.