the ache underway

Here it goes, with the murky horizon swallowing up the sky, the first spoonful of the gloaming there among the clouds. Here they comes the whispering of facts and riot acts, the holes in the roof and the unlovely truths. The place past prayers and nightmares, ghosts speaking plainly from their absence and their evidence. The place where the price comes due in shades and flickers, the plate in the microwave, the shards in the trash. The unforeseen collateral and the predictable outcomes there on the floor, the love that ran its course, the ache that’s always there and the ache underway. 

There it is, that long last reach of sunlight, the play of light in the sweep and sway of the pines. The body clenched between everyday arthritics and the bone burden of weather lore, between winds ambivalent to spring and winter, between small scale memories and the stories spilling relentlessly into the long lost. That moment when the orchestra hits that sting from the score, the peal of the big reveal sold whole hearted, eyes wide to the twists and turns of plot plod and bridges burned. Hat in hand, head bowed to the inevitable unforeseen.

Even once the years play out it stays, too close not to leave the occasional mark. The heavy holds court, the colors, the flavors, the clues you should have taken as they seem. The very favor you feel you labor under as much angle and attitude, the blessings unclear below the rubble, the spell lingering in unspoken lies and lives. Time flies as you witness it more and more, the current of clock and calendar a river in a rage. The words don’t want you, and every eventual uninviting becomes a force of the rote, the things done routinely take on the sheen of the norm and the radiance of destiny. A year further on, close enough to burn.

the whole bang and whimper

There you are amid the din, this immediate tide of every returning river another signal on low and high. What is this among the numbers you might say if your the type. This tuning in upon the morsel, this ancient hymn glistening upon the bones of the respite, the whole wide stride of it somehow come to the well tied tongue to symbol and drum. The light there right in your gaze mirror and glass and the immense reflection. The light there in your eyes as you squint and listen. The wish always weighing each consideration, down to blood and equivocation. Right there where what the heart wants is a better warden.

All balled up, sheets and sweat and breath heavy in the dark. The fleeting memory, the shiny teeth of the dream, something livid just behind the moment. There in the reach, names and reasons, some dreadful exposition treading just outside the mind. The nightmare lines all taut in the wheeze and crackle all close up with the shadows in the lungs, the body’s burdens clinging to a bedlam of incorporeal antagonists, bad dream boogie men and the evil astride these ill endings. The thoughts rushing in on waking to another world there in the night.

There’s no telling what you’ll miss, the winds getting their wander on, the crows as they place their orders. It’s the sounds of bells and traffic as another month bleeds by, painted skies and all the harbingers a buzz. That banging on the door that only serves to set the nerves to jangle and the dogs to barking, some tired patter of words the decrescendo to brushback the bother of cold calls and unwanted salvation. Sirens softly doppler out of earshot as the sway of sunlight and pine boughs offers its counsel through the open window while the dogs howl and howl. The inkling mutters beneath the skin, that ever there dread that indulges us little threats and glimmers as the tide comes crashing down. Now and never, the flood and fold of this desolate forever, that moment before you blink.