recipe

The days come upon us, either ragged travelers or outlandish bandits, bowl or cutlass brandished in advance of the latest onslaught. We bow out, we battle on, sometimes both at once. The dance is fierce within even our most day laden weary, the struggle ever all we are, the deep insistence of life. The dance is on us even in silence and in the still. This turn of dust and shadows and sparrows’ wings. This pot always on the burner.

In the beginning, the soil ascends. Others crept and crawled and split in the sunlight and the soup, but the soil was our consecration, it was the covenant and the recipe. Stones beaten down for a billion years, while fire rained and rain and the heavens boiled and burned. The web and the weaving, the whispers running through root and gut and earth, this is the foundation of all the us there is. Life still runs on those ancient engines and first words. Meat and magic and the turning dirt.

I remember before the silence, before the lights went out. The ancient light aglow somehow on these vagrant horizons, the repetitions and the net benefits. Your hands at once a continuity. Your eyes the only tomorrows I could see. Now this breathtaking vacancy, and a soul on loan from life’s long game, the beauty bright in the distance. Now the nameless hunger given a name and blessed face. Another ingredient surrendered to the dish.