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.