There
was a song she sang with her eyes
if
only in passing
a
lullaby sculpted in sadness and yet
sung with celebration and joy…
and
this is what I knew of her
And
so the morning sky squatted down
with
overcast tones
cracking
open only to give birth to
a
confusion of sun and cloud
lying
naked across the table, crying
I
sat at a chair there, staring at a cup
empty
enough to count,
swathed
in light and shadow and thirst,
unsure
of what if any
meaning
even the least of it might hold
Beginnings
must beg their endings, I guessed,
rising
up to no occasion,
pushing
myself from the table
with
little resistance
and
no really clear sense of where to go
It
was later in the night that the candle would ignite
golden
diamonds in her eyes
on
which she delicately balanced all caution
against
the passion of the flickering light,
encapsulating
the questions of the day into the mysteries of the night
I
arose from the table and stepped back into myself,
turning
only not to see
in
another direction, as the splinters of light
strewn
across the table behind me
slipped
and faded away into the distant corners of the room
Late
season cicadas sang of summers lost
as
I opened the door to step out
into
the world in which we only pretend to own control
the
purpose and direction of the path
lying
before me partially obscured by overgrown weed and grass
The
hours were due to drift by too slowly
before
coming to an end too soon,
the
designs that my mind had held the days before
to
be obligations on these very passing minutes
had
lost all color and focus between then and now
And
yet she would hold the evening in her hand
as
if it were a brush
with
which she might create the very vision
of
every human emotion
without
so much as a conscious thought of doing so
There
were things to do – I knew –
places
to stop without going,
thoughts
to capture before their outlines
dissipated
into the shadows,
simple
things now too complex to figure out
In
a way, this day had a sense of needing to
start
over again, maybe more than once,
there
was nothing there to see past it with,
no
glass clear enough through which
it
might pause long enough to reflect upon itself
If
this is it, this is what it is, it might have told me
as
if saying such a thing could be
what
it would be like to be imbued with wisdom,
but
there was not conscious truth to
each
step that I had taken or would yet take – they simply were
Time,
when it arrived, would find me neither
sitting,
standing, knelt nor dancing,
there
could be no determined approach into,
away
from, or around
the
song with which she sang her every move
For
now, the ground simply slipped away beneath me
with
more direction than intention,
simple,
sweet sunlight streamed past like a series
of
post cards sent as if to suggest
that
there might yet be other places toward which to go
But
I cannot remember now quite where it was that
I
did or did not quite get to,
only that faintest of choruses of distant
sounds…
the
saws, the cicadas, birds and crickets, the
whole
host of breeze-borne voices muffled by something to the air
Set
two places at the table and wait
for
an empty chair to gain meaning
conversations
come and go without the need
for someone to share them with –
It’s
never the words themselves that crave the company
The
greatest accomplishment of some late days
is simply making it through them –
eventually
our bearings will remind themselves
of
what and where they are,
eventually
something in everything will make as much sense as we allow it
Talk’s
only talk – traded across a table with
someone who is or is not there…
at
the same table I rose and stepped away from hours before
it
is the evening sweeping down around me
it
is the light in the evening that will capture me for all and more than I know
She
will smile with a shy sincerity that will beguile me
she
will allow me the pleasure
of
aching for places unknown and unseen
and
I will wonder how it is that I might touch such a thing
even
as I wilt before the glorious sparkling of its light.