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The light leans in late in the day, a cathedral of clouds and bandwidth, the sky within a glimpse of your eyes. This is the instant that engages, this is a mouth fumbling between answers and a kiss, the heavy handed fates or the slow roll ritual mitigation. We of treadmills and turnstiles, we of bit and tack, doing the works of heaven and earth. The smoke coils out enough rope, stitched together by vestigial wants and threadbare repetitions, anchored to the dance of ashes. Worn smooth and small by this insistent beauty, worn down by ancient fustigations and worldly curses. The plying of the grays and greens, the crows at last headed home.

Why bother to proclaim, why bother to believe. The will finds a way. Words to tow a ruthless truth like a vice to take a tooth. Words to stir the grease and gristle, words to sop the well licked plate. Over and over they fold under the rigors of your tongue, the flame as it flatters the ash. Traveling through the tangle of lung and blood, passed through taste and touch. We are the weave, both web and tapestry, both swaddling and the sack. The words are always working their way into the world. Let them fill in the colors, let them bear the beating of these black wings and hungry flashing dragonflies, the thought trailed unformed into ellipsis….

The sun says adios and the appetites all take aim. The hungers keen a little in the gathering dusk. Leaves dance reels and tarantellas, the wind alway ready to whet some waiting ghost, a shape of things taken and violence left speaking. We step slow, we keep our eyes soft, the changes unchastened by our wit and gravitas. Gone and gone, on and on we go, trailing sparks and steam. Our embouchure fitted clever to our engines and instruments, we turn the time and light into song and symbol. This turn of the earth, this stack of stones. The words that will replace our blood and bones.