matt pond PA

February 28, 2018

Cat Skills.

The whine of a single-engine airplane. A baritone kazoo, a full-throttle concert B, punctuated with insistent, barking crow calls.

Then silence. Car-less, voice-less, bird-less, bug-less, wind-less silence.

Nonetheless, this silence still sustains an ambient high hum, somewhere between a soft, sizzling rub and an unseen breeze, blending with the tinnitus, a lifetime devoted to amplification.

I see the murky reflection first, wide-winged and drifting out over the glassy water — a bald eagle briefly soars at the edge of my eyesight, instantaneously disappearing into the blur of leafless, brown trees.

This is the show I came to see. Barely perceptible and electronically unquantifiable. I lean back and smell eager grass ready to grow under last fall’s dead leaves.

An Empire Service Amtrak train cuts a straight, low line across the horizon. The purple and blue Catskills hold the background — they invariably carry the scene in these parts. They are so damn patient and cool. (Yes, I am jealous of the control that inanimate objects contain. A consciousness always searching for a cure.)

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