flower count

It’s right there in front of you, staring straight into your dead dumb eyes. The sharp pop between the teeth, the warm ubiquity of blood on the tongue, these words rooted in the sooth of your soil. All the true worlds lay hidden in the weave, so featured from foundation to firmament that they fill the fishbowl. We float surrounded by the spectrum that we sing, the long talk, the old story. A world of constant warning and meticulous wonder turning on the tip of the telling. The universe can’t get away from us fast enough.

An endless repast, a constant parting, the passage and the reel. We are among the recent verses, a few choice words spoken sharply and a little too loud for the room. Here it’s spring, now is then, the road can only open. The days barely graze, the words go on and on. Bleeding out with the world in bloom. Dissolving with the straying attention. It’s a tough life, deep into the epilogue. The going only ever gets gone.

The weather is turning by the bay. The ocean rocks away to the west, letting loose a lullaby, a sheen of rain set to the natal greens of the rolling hills along the coast. The voice of the forecast somehow calling down bridge and highway, through wood and weld some once dear ghost, a lost love or beat poet as memory gives way to myth. Blackout mornings fumbling with the keys, the stairs a hollow half step, voices down the hallway, TV through the door. All the ancient derelictions, skipping school and stealing books, the random cackling vandals and the line gone dead. The strange winds that left me bent and friendless now remind me of the flower count in itch and reddened eyes. It is what it is until it’s something else, and then it’s all that and the night before too.