In the after.
Then, the light moved from us, and with it, those familiar unknown bodies that used to catch and dance with it, and the water went dark. Then we wondered, but there was no one to ask. Why had we made an audience of these creatures, when we might have gathered sooner to witness? What they were.
What persists.
Sometimes we survived by finding points of comparison between one impossible situation and another in which the sufferer was redeemed––not, perhaps, by the story itself, and certainly not by the suffering, but somehow by the lens that framed their seeming isolation within an often-invisible chorus of others who had been singled out and separated with intention to erase. An old story: the slash and burn of innate acres of wild no-man’s land. So much is predictable about the murder of wilds. And yet, the endlessly inventive processes of emergence and renewal by which life manages to survive to sing another day––so frequently evokes such stunned awe that its witness will be left unable to describe what took my breath away––as if to remind us, bearers of these weary sighs, of the astonishing abundance that still lives, even now, even here in this burning place.
An expanse beyond self.
What, then, have you won? Give me No One’s name. Having long since rejected the assumptions of the acolytes of progress, I am gone from the metaphor that makes the conquest of my seeming forms its mark.
––And with that, from your ordered pairs: Nature/ Mind; Nature/ History; Nature/Art. You claim victory in classification and find structure only in subjection, erasure, my silence. You assume I am quiet now, but the frequency of this song is beyond your hearing.
What was the point of your logic, except to keep me? I am not the end, but the reach. This body is no monarchy, and neither are these wants, invisible to the lens trained on contours. This tongue of a thousand tongues speaks sound without border or death.
I do not guard myself from breaking into endless unknowns, refusing life nothing that it passes through this unnamed constellation of shifting membranes, and not one contains a subject you can recognize. Come away from the shadow of your scepter and see.
Descendants of an aftermath.
When the smoke cleared, we left what was left of the temples and abandoned our sacrificial cups. No longer painting the chapel walls, we made canvases of our skins, our creed now take this body, and we gave it up. Nothing could save us, and we carried this truth as a torch foisted before our faces, marching into the long night. We were something else now, wild, painted creatures of flesh and word, with no more monuments to shield us from the elements that mocked our feeble forms. An awareness grew, of an element breathing among us as we moved, but we would no sooner mark this with a sign than claim the wind.
Study of opposites.
The first chance of vision comes with the arrival of its flaming eruption. It was in us, then far, then near again. After that, many of the early lessons consisted of reminders not to touch.
Imagination is a fire, but so often misunderstood as a decorative tool for embellishing what is already known.
What is this understanding, except an answer to what came before? A firm No, it is this way now.
Immersion in radiance is so different from controlling light.
Still, this want.
Chasing Time.
Hurried notes claimed our footsteps, dancing us to the next moment.
Quick, the chorus called, Time is running. We, ever after it, had never known stillness. Do you mean, we wanted to ask, that once we stayed, and Time with us? What would that be like, we wondered, to climb the craggy rungs of his beard, tethered between once and will? Instead, we spilled into Space––into spaces, flooding.
Something was off, or all of it. If stillness came again, we meant to ask. We thought we knew the flood story: an ark, the saving rainbow, dove of peace, but in an age on the run the known ones would not hold. How could we be the flood, the water itself, the coming storm? What did this mean for the rainbow, the dove, no longer of us?
Who floats, then, into the next dawn––or what?
At a verge.
Let this body
of word grow
flesh enough to hold
at ample volume
an amniotic silence
to protect
what would die
with its
utterance.
Of intentions and nourishment.
Born carried away, of a desire that will neither die nor introduce itself by name to a stranger, it becomes obvious that I am that, too. So taken––from every place and the self, too––I cannot arrive.
At the end of everything, when the flow continues, so does this singular insistence. Bleed.
Hand opens soil to hide these delicate hopes, even at the end and especially then. Flower? Maybe. Of course, they will be trampled, as lives are. And yet. They will live, too. There is no certainty in this, but there it goes, happening.
Moving to stop.
A long way from their destination, the travelers continued for a very long time. After the last of their maps was lost in the wind, they kept on. They had enough provisions, but nothing of visible progress. Eventually, one among them said, “we’re not getting anywhere.” No one objected.
That night, there was a great celebration. Food and drink were passed around. They joked and argued, cried and laughed, danced and loved. Eventually, everyone slept until it was time to move again. The group continued, arriving nowhere, and spirits were vastly improved.
Overheard, between chases.
There you go again, Alice, with your rabbit. What now?
Let me guess. It’s the old question about time, and
why you can’t see it, exactly, even as it leaves traces
everywhere while this visible abundance of space makes
a mystery of itself by including the atmosphere
with no evidence to label: this. It cuts you.
You should eat something. Here. Apple slice?
This, at least, is visible. Maybe also at most.
See the lilac, its leaning posture even in rest.
Now the oak, raining leaves.
Will love save any of it? I can’t tell you, Alice.
I am not laughing at you. Okay, a little. Here,
have another slice. I know you want to know
if it’s enough, but what are you counting:
acres? Dollars?
Look, only a machine will move in reverse.
Your question is moot, muted by necessity
of movement between stations and the
fact that you are still hoping for a chance
to erupt from this constellation of endings
into a singular, magnificent bloom.
