There a glimmer amongst the salt and ash, a stranded wanderer envious of the stars, a map without a means dragging a path around. Words that fell without thought past the press of tooth tongue and breath, a light left on a reason all its own. The struggle of the bellows, the work of iron and earth, held to the workings of these buried wings. I say so it seems I’m saying, the lift of bough, the plunge of air. This missed kiss, this symbol folded from vapor. Oh this flash, oh this atmosphere. This plummet of consequence and stone.
We leave our living everywhere, in hauls and heaps and artifacts, these middens of words and waste. Twisted and tangled by ardent attachment and dull habit, we plod and plot and scheme until the last wisp of steam escapes us. Here among the heritable relics, broken clocks and mismatched bar ware, we move with rat and minotaur in the labyrinthine depths of the abandoned. Death scattered like ash, only the tenacity of blunt object and tenured dust.
So it is I take my station, facing east as the dusk comes running, these gray skies bum rushing the spring in May’s first glimmer. So it is I witness the Black Phoebe feed on the glut of crane flies in the lush green remainders of the last rain. I smoke and drool, spitting embers and evidence on broken masonry and cracked concrete, this restless portion of the vast decline fading with me one more time. It isn’t in earth, it isn’t in ink. A word or two sprinkled upon this dream, a lingering passed along.