a cat is not a clock

Midnights come, midnights go, the stars glaze over, connecting dots all across the sky. The ghost trawls the blood, coiling through smoke thick and whisper deft.  It asks its questions and is given riddles. It asks for grace and is given words. The shift in the material always a measure of some recording played before the court. A burnt brow glowing in a sheen of sweat, the heat another index of every change to come. The clay pressed and pushed, the work witnessed once it has finished, the sentence given once it is served. Call and call, it will never come running. Time is spent, time is burned. A cat is not a clock.

Even so, I have seen some shipwrecks. Even so, I have been known to wager true. No second guess ever gets counted if the first one comes out wrong. Once it get broke bad enough, every horse could be a king. The rest are these island wishes. The bottle unstoppered, the thoughts all get let loose. The question spills out, and it will never be unasked. Why not tempt fate when every arrow shot must fall? Why not bet again when the swallow will certainly fly? Nothing ever so certain as faith.

The night crawls on, all heat and hunger and breath like prayer. The easy pitch of unseen wings, hints left itching their way into flesh. Hands reach and fold, clinging to these ancient labors in the dark. That folded flower, that insistent ink. The touch that feels like a sudden light. The kiss that clings to the slow dissolve. Memories and the movies, poems and unearthed shards of pottery. I can read the numbers, but I can not tell the time. Call and call, I remain unbidden. If it is there, I can only claim it. If I was witness, I still can do nothing except say.