It’s not that my robes are ragged, I am clad in rags. My cup is empty, my branch burns in tatters, pulled close by the deep lean into shadow. It’s a cold moment, old bones bared to the teeth of twilight, the crows calling from the antecedents of dusk. Watching the last touch of sunlight graze the cheek of a neighbor’s house, crow wings in shadow and in sky, the house where I last saw the moon on the rise. The home of the block elder at a spry 97 was where she last bestowed her blessing, the last light a blaze painted in golds and yellows, the offering all I can convey across this gravity lensed altar. The buckling between skin sky and mind.
So the day sheds its ornaments, its ecstatic bandwidths and rampant palette, layer after layer of shadow pooling all about. This egg hued firmament the last vanity until the night is revealed, the faintest tread a revelation, this grave dance of shade and starlight as all the lights go out. The depths past the horizon spilling over as we tumble ever eastward swinging wildly at every pitch, the thickening blues and purples, the inky ever after and the ache unto the moon’s arrival. I smoke as the earth beneath me trembles. I smoke as the altar hungers and the heavens hint at miracles.
This is the gaze that is dedicated to a direction. This is the lesson of the simplest sameness, never knowing exactly what to expect. You wash up in the world, you linger in the lore, you learn your map as best as you can manage. I wait in the wash of ache, I slow into the wake of the hunger, the glowering aspect of the fine honed appetite. Only the smoke and the ember, the breath burning bright and sullen, the dawdling fire in each word shed. Only the stars to stare at as the windows light up to look within. The old song, the heart tripping up the temple, awaiting her embrace.