forecast

When the only law is make a fire, burning down never makes it to the courts. Air and fuel eking out some rule, the cough and sputter yet another of the sacred rituals. The strike and spark always the tool picked to take the day. The supreme calm of flint awaiting spiteful steel. The blinding brilliance of that stroke of lucky flame, dancing along the edge of the irrevocable. You must either burn or go out.

Then it comes in fits and drizzles, the tide of eyes before the teeth of the storm, the breath and prayer of the insolent atmosphere. How bright the sky before the tense deluge. How surprised the glove when the gloves come off. Empty so long of anything to feel except fists. The rictus of the submerged structure all the draw and set of any equation. Empty of move or motive what words will do? The thirst you suffer has its roots in the restless heavens. The rain nothing answered, only another result.

So I tend a few small dim fires. So the winter is always in my fingers first, that frost sharp on the skin and rough on the bones. The sunrise, the sunset, a dense remark, a pile of plates. I stray from the tongue I have attended, each thought a reflex pretending at reflection. The angels all weighed with surface tension, the wings and inferences at a loss on this scale. All the wishes in steady sentences read as served. I stretch along this laden plain, only ever ready to spark. The night its chill, the fire its burn.