the regrettable

 The stars are out even when you don’t see them, beaten at once by the boundless blue sky and the blazing yellow sun. The thoughts exist even when you don’t think them, spinning there in the circuitous grooves of the ethereal wax, your mind the stylus instilled to the inevitable. This spilling inside out self and sense, the thorough stirring of the every element in the mix, the prosaic to the poetic to the cyphers and the figments in and out the dreaming. The tables turn, the candles burn, every sinking sun takes away the breath and leaves the breathing. We weren’t before and we won’t be later, the scuffing of shoes, the shifting of labors. We are in the midst of our imagining, the regrettable day only going to go around the corner and come up behind you wearing a fake mustache or a wig. The moment only witnessed in its extinction, the self just a voice in the mirror.

Outside the hazy day begins to breathe a little easier, the smoke thinning in the blue gray gaze of sky. Flies light upon the flesh, beetles speed along the concrete, traffic passes as if it must. The unwatered tree drops its leaves upon the dusty earth and the jealous ants that swarm and huddle and madly thirst as the dirt goes dry. The crows that croaked and cawed have taken wing or hopped a fence or are keeping their own counsel. All that is certain is that the heavens are less without them, and the world hurts down to the foundation. From the firmament to the fundaments, the diminishment speeds as the matter huddles, everything hurtling away all at once. Learn to want more or learn to live in the unbearable less. Contend with the contentions or manage the machine.

The hours creep, the words have gone, the heart set many miles away. The day recedes, the ceiling weighing in on the cluttered roomful of empty. Counting in cats and lingering kindnesses, watching the sky and the pines. Soon the moon makes its way, flouting the fractious bonds of the night. We all scrape and fawn, swayed by angle and albedo, spun by the myths built into our blood. The television warm tones of remembered yesteryears, a busy two year old thinking the landing was old news based on the space family Robinson and that awful Dr. Smith. Jabbering away as plastic jungle animals and toy soldiers continued to contest the rug. The older lore, the revealed gods and plentiful werewolves had to wait, though gods and monsters were busy there already. This was long before the calamitous soul was loosed in the child, back before the sorrows of school and the long body count. The moon yet magic, all the mistakes save one still waiting in the chamber.