the same

I couldn't find it with all the stars shining for me. I wouldn't know it if I saw it glide by, an owl hunting along the low tide of sky. The world is a mystery beyond my faculties and skills. This is the trouble with prayer, the silt in that river of wishes. Always an asking melting under my tongue, always a wanting bending the direction of my senses. I speak aloud just the same, given to endless guessing. Without knowing, I repeat your name.

Knowledge is terror when there are consequences waiting in the dark. Certainty that least dependable of sensations. Angles of exposure and the settled bet of a wide and open field. Dangers of omission and the structures of luck. There is always that next step, fool's errand or leap of faith. There is always that final debt to come due. What we do not know can end any debate.

The winds pounce and rollick, the trees all swing and sway. Voices fly about, loose leaf and shed breath, carrying on another kind of conversation. Smoke coils and bolts, spilling through the seems of the air. Silent wings slide by above, always preaching the lessons of the hunt. I am another obscure location, sprawled in the bug bite dusk. I am another vague intention, lost in the indistinctions of the night.