lattice

Here the mingled smoke and shadows climb tree and trellis, the down bound sun and eastward spin pushing the grasping blue down through the skins of things, setting every darkness free. The tumble and turn along the curve we learn clutched to this careening. The wheel of the cosmos and the wake of this vast sojourn, dragged along this dervish twirl by our mad god star, flung and caught at our apogee to further hurtle for what looks like eternity. The mind soaks in the atmosphere of turbulence and stimuli, a byproduct of thousands of collisions large and small, ground like optical glass, stropped like a razor. The bright sky saturated with the sun’s slow sinking, the intention held as the dusk gathers in on the shallow side of the sky.

I sit still and smoke, offering up to to the directions and the aspects, speaking to the first stirred and the oldest of the hungers. Smoke bowls bitter upon my tongue as dust dances with the devils all about. The gated brain and the current of gut slough off the rough edges and collaborate with the twilight sky. I lick my lips, the taste of remaindered kisses and salty skin. The day sways its lullabies as an ice cream truck accelerates without a child in sight. The power fills my lungs and seethes up through the roots, the once and future filling up the organism, this share of skin and bones fleshed out by star and stone. The entity and the self meeting at the intersection of time and light.

The sky is still bright peeking through the lattice of leaf and limb above the swell of shadow filling up street and yard. Stippled light speckles trees and homes as the tallest roofs sink into the gloaming. Crows call their teams together before returning to their roost, gleaming ink and skill across cloud striped blue, making way for the waxing apparitions awake at once and waiting on the night. Clip the winds wings and cull the clutter from the cacophony of busy humans and unkempt objects gifted with unseemly agency. Homo Ruckus bang and gibber, their turn at its twilight. I think of a dream of bats spilling from my door, a joyful wish replaced by an ache upon waking, their absence felt more as the swallows surf and spill down the wind. The hollow bowl of being always in need of replenishment, the heart hitting the night running.