apostle

Dusk comes and we slip off the edge of the world, sliding into the press of shadows, falling into the crush of night. All the bodies clinging to their particulars, model and mode meet at the intersections. Sweat and pine resin, the bitter draught and the sheen of dusk. The dreams all pool up as light makes its changes, the held breath, the missed drift. The passage all that we may abide.

The bird sweeps the wind, wings being all about the spread. The dog bites each bit, every morsel meant as marrow and bone. Every molecule is in contention, every atom endures these clipped confessions. Matter is at its most exacting when its cost comes due. The rendering by heat and compression. The gossip that the material world whispers about changing states. The glamor of all this collapse and resistance, the glory of the word nearly left upon a still and reverent tongue. We pay in mystery and kind.

Stand still to great the sun. Hold course to meet the evening star. The permutations of flesh and hunger, the teetering glimpse of each open intersection as it slides into the shimmering mirror. We wait in the stammering starlight. We pause before the wash of dawn. We reach and strain, grasp and falter, this changing that is our place in the world.