the golden hour

I admit I missed the moment, heels dug into the metaphor, stubborn to the extremes of every sense. Time was that the eye could witness even if the words were out, time was that was among the unnumbered duties held sacred by the heart. But the material grows more permeable as the soul cools down, from thunder to fumes in a few short years, beauty becomes another ache as the world goes on without. Yesterday I saw some crows sweep west just as the horizon was flush with sun, piercing the will of the wind with a lean and a nod. Today it is children walking yip dogs that hurl themselves heedlessly at my dogs through the fence, it is the neighbors attending to their yards and cars. Trees sway and wind chimes ring and the moment waits until I blinked, and again it is the aftermath, an instant gone in a white hot flash. I sit and smoke as the dusk leans in close enough to whisper oh well.

I don’t know what to make of the silent crow in the crown of the tree above me. I didn’t speak of it to the crow. Sometimes your destiny is to mind your own business. More and more there are stories that are no longer mine, I follow along as best I can, pass along tales I don’t understand. There the distance between this want and this witness, the once was that lingers as I know it’s gone, the slow swim against the rush into irrelevance. Once all the lessons are only language, there is little to be said at all. This press against the inevitable and the unknown all you own of the blood and bones. This kiss just in case you still want the touch and taste, a morsel for the ministry of tooth and tongue, this breath held to measure in the syllables you incant. 

Days have past since I started another round of saying that I cannot say, this dull plodding perpetuity trudging the boulder uphill, the bare backed rituals of calendar and clock. All this smoking, this spin of the wind beneath the eaves. A clout of sorrow and then the measures never met. The slow assembly of the inevitables out past the drift of probability. It takes time to awake as the fool tossed by indulgent follies, the twist in the telling, the fork in the road. I dream of lost worlds and flirtatious ghosts as each day the world is birthed anew. The radiance spilling over the rooftops, the shadows swelling like sails taking wind, the magic of this mortal portion. Facts moldering into fable, the mythos like a lover as it takes my tongue, ancient offerings and carnal sacraments. The feel through your bare feet as the the earth and the atmosphere dance a reel around your spine. This beauty that you can only pass along.