world of wonder

The idle fire of this winter sun has all but burned down, leaving a sky like sallow faith lingering on the skin. Plumes of dust and unsettled embers, trees fill with shadows, abiding this slithering sense of self. The name that fails to find a tongue, the face that stills, another portion of bone and flesh dancing in feel and fact. The frantic yapping of unhinged dogs ringing every  roof and door. Houses settle in the hinted warmth of hushed windows and electric light, the smell of smoke embedded in every moment alive. The sun glides beneath the horizon, this world of wonder loosed like doves.

The coffee clings to the steel of the cup, its bitter secrets swallowed like that old time religion, its heat a rumor best left to the digression of the senses. Dusk comes along with its typical bag of tricks, homebound birds and the glitter of distant prophecy. Stars parse the breadth of eternity, the sky flickering with the promise of every visible wish. My heart climbs up the steps of each breath and incantation, breathing in this tide of a life so far survived. Blood mingling with the atmosphere, everything connected and alone.

The hours trod on, step by step, breath and heartbeat. The slow fizz of subatomic indistinction, the turn of the wheel, the rise of the road. The umbrage of this existence sung in ache and pain, in lore and sign. The indistinction of soul and secret. The mystery so evident in all we cannot know. Sense and flesh always indistinct, any separation bequeathing only things and pieces. I speak in this slow elocution, the clumsy cadence of this peculiar incantation. The air around you aware of your every thought and glimmer, I'm there with you alone.

across all creation

My feet braid the traces of everyday trails stepping through the braces of the back door. I scuffle through the plumes of dust, every sense so vivid, slipping on the setting sun. The day failing its saddle like a bent crusader falling into shadows on white sands. The night abrupt a stone in a slipper, adrift in these drizzled stars. All the habits of these stray constellations, the wander tracked all through the halls of this wanting heart.

We are vast and we are ageless, though just the shimmer upon the least stir of dust, the last exhalation of this ever shifting world. This abrupt insistence upon the skins of things, this strange hubris that supposed sentience confides. We are as temporary as the vibrations a voice casts into the crowded atmosphere, the measure of a moment all askew. In the dark I misstep and spill an ashtray, stumbling another turn of dirt, shifting the words to the end of another sentence. Curls of smoke knowing they will forever be remembered across all creation.

Say today and it seems like shaking hands with Mr Obvious. Say tomorrow and they treat it like fantasy. They change the names and juke the numbers, cast their silly spells of words and watches. As if the constraints of punctuation can hold back the endless tide. As if they could know enough to see the shift in the substance, the lay of the waves of light. The dreams that seethe through the dwindle and the dark. The tide of life granted from some depth of the cosmos shall never succumb to something as trifling as will. As if this dance upon the burning path is any less a god because the only thing agreed on is ending.

two weeks

I don't know what I was thinking while the shadows clambered up the branches. I don't know where the moon was before I saw it in the trees. I hear the bowing of a violin, I hear a helicopter over head. For a moment there is a wash of echoes as these voices take the field. A sky once bright now again goes dark. The words all wondering whether they even want to stay.

Children play among these vacancies, the empty field, the faithless dusk. Geese above belabor their point, their voices plaintive and prolonged. Another song takes the air, a rock n roll poet of the classic type, the reach between our devastated lives and our childhood radios. It plays on like a prayer, all feeling and futility. The lift and the drag, the drift and the draw. The moon mingles with this numb enchantment, every phrase a poem, every breath sheer urgency.

Say it again before we lose the moment. Say it once more  only because I ask you to. These mingling tides of want and wander, the movements of the flocks and the folk. I linger in this ancient history that always seems to be busy happening. I cling to the faith of plodding earth and restless skies, the way I cannot wander when I look into your eyes. I cling to your every border, mingling with every inference and egress. The world and two weeks away, a sense of impending home.

the weather, once it's mentioned

All his darlings dead before him, he can't put his tattered mind to rest. All the hours watching shadows as they slip and stick. Every lamp left by the wayside. The open bathroom to light the grimy halls. The stories on the television adrift on this tide of tears. Weary from the very moment waking, tired as his dreams grind down. The crawling dust each step inspires.

The words are still, clinging to the shabby curtains. The words are slow, crawling down the wall. A color of eyes so far forgotten her gaze sweeps through every frosted wind. The bluff touch, the startled whisper. Your name a sharp percussive start, the street as empty as a story's grave. The frozen earth too cold for dreaming. The house so bright and thoroughly bereft.

So all the world has gone to winter. The old songs dry and sparkling in his heart. The frost clings in whiskered crystals. The strange cohesion of rough words and dry lips, teeth fouled with grime and smoke. The greasy eyes trodden down with weather. The glaze and glare of nothing more to say. The belly betrays, then the back, then the senses. A heart just left out to ache and parley. He speaks aloud the spell that destroys him, weighing down the blackness as the stars just fall away.

the rumor never put to rest

There's still light in the sky when the moon makes its come back, a slip thin smile spilling over the edge of the world. It waxes and wanes, all the while wandering in the space between the sky and dreaming. It falls and rises the most inside our reckless minds, the brimming light and the dead sunken stone. The bountiful goddess or the rock stuck in the sky like a named sword, waiting for some king. The neighborhood is abruptly all howl and alarm, the streets swept with sirens, the yards scattered with dogs. The twilight settles like sediment, like a sentiment settling a bet.

The ragged pines are swaddled in shadow as the earth steps over the edge, the sky clotted with birds and dreams. The night comes on with its toothless grin and its crooked gait, stirring the deepening breaths and the nameless hollows. The hunger a thing of life and limb as it moves through the dazzling gaps between action and intent. An electric leavening sparking through reach and grasp, an empty that must be heard above the din and rush of this untoward blood and appetite. The world remade from sticks and stones, the words the only ache acknowledged. This vision of existence the pull of the heedless swarm.

I sit outside and write these letters. My finger feel out the form as the darkness stalks the world. All this burning so much smoke billowing in the breeze, this spark another flicker in the night. The lovely and the brutal so vivid upon every skin, eyes always open wherever they may long to look. I speak aloud beneath the sounds of animals and traffic, a coyote always scrambling from scrap to sop. I speak aloud though it is only the collateral of each labored breath. What of my heart, what of Heaven? The clock on the wall and the calendar scribbled over with regrets. The words I leave awaiting you to grant them meaning. My legacy the rumor never put to rest.