top of the world

The sky is bright and the day is blue and warm. Sunlight stirs the skins of things, and the bees just hang from from every bloom. The dry throat of the earth, the dominance of dust, all parleyed past thought by every sense. black wings and evergreens, pine sap and blue feathers, everything finding its level in the end. All the cigar butts and glutted ashtrays, all the unearthed stones and the broken bricks speak to my shallow disarray. My heart sings just as deep and open as any grave.

The gray days ease in between storms and thirsty stones. Lightning spills down and thunder splits the air, storms that rode the restless ocean walking across field and hill. Green fills each bough and lot, an elucidation of insects and spiders seems to flow from the bewitched soil. The clouds brace the sky, making bets and promises as they veil the face of the shining sun. We ease between want and illness, between rhythm and appetite. We slow before every obstacle, we speed down every slippery slope. The path of rout and rapine somehow fleshed out in every feeble faith. The sky wanders, the earth wanders, while we think the world wants our pleadings.

There is rain waiting in the forecast, there are shadows sticking to every skin. My story is all love and squander, it is the wide wander from the distant primal seas unto these days of empty and of ache. The words well with typical tears, the litany goes dribbling down my beard, slobber slick and aged gray. All this blood and fury hobbling in shabby circles, boots caked with mud, books heavy with dust. I speak aloud the expected spells, love and hunger, death and wealth. The bent bones of this beaten man so keen to give up every ghost.  The shuffling gait of this stumble bum bearing the brunt of my daily blasphemies. This supplication spent for the weather when heaven is only stars and storms.