Like This Very Afternoon.
Like this very afternoon, when the sun is coming straight for me from the horizon. Insouciant sideways gold light. And I can’t make everything out, but I get great flashes, sharply contrasting moments of mountain outlines, tree branch and power line towers.
The undefiled convict trying to escape himself. Through boughs of long, soft pine needles. Translucent green mixed with yellow sumac and reddening maple. Clouds, the threadbare ivory sheets above, smudged on the overhanging wise blues. Below, orange and brown litter of brittle leaves, of things to come, of the eventual and inescapable passing. Boozy insects hum and buzz, slacking and splayed in an overgrown pasture.
Woodland impulses, prickly dreams, connected disconnection. I finally fit in. Black shorts and aqueous insides on a stray synaptic search out in the wild. Sometimes junk food hungry, sometimes looking for cheap, truehearted love. Always trying to get lost in a sick song.
The greatest moments are seasonally swirling and nearly unconscious as the mind goes missing. Extended eyelids let the other senses stretch. The drawn-out woosh and whir of grass and weed. With the same pervasive smell from the barns of youth. Soil, hay, decay.
Look out through the misshapen brambles and see the bicycle acrobats hightailing to the shops, highway pilots precariously threading yellow lines. And yet we sometimes still fear the cyclical conclusions that validate our days and give meaning to our existence. As if there’s another way, as if anyone is above or beyond the only true fate we all share.
I don’t get it. Death is just death.