matt pond PA

July 30, 2017

Provincial Wolves.

It’s not like that. The scent is not entirely lost.

The windows still pull shapes from the sky. The door is a constant summons to more.

What an easy and amazing walk uptown. Brilliant yellow incandescent scenes framed by branches, heavy with swollen leaves. A stumbling couple weaves through shadows, using signs as walking sticks, enmeshed and exchanging limbs.

The same shadows where the silent, banished smokers hide. Only the embers give them away, a pulsing glow from gaping porch darkness.

Loitering bbq smoke and the charred smell of skunk spray. The trains from midtown wail, lumbering metal cetaceans chasing tail. Lazy deeds delivered, block by block, clanging absentmindedly through intersections and out past the city limits.

The sidewalks here, persistently flippant. Always uneven, as if recovering from an earthquake or set in place by stroppy teenagers, the dangerous sons and daughters of sloppy masons.

In the village, time could be anytime. The candy store is open late. The coffee shop is closed early. Each individual adhering to their own circadian rhythm. Revolutionary yawns under breezy awnings.

Summer rules mean that there are no rules. The worst feelings are easily flipped on their backs, convulsing in laughter. The margins are wide enough to let streetlights shine through until dawn cuts in. Clothing is optional.

Years have passed, yet we are still the same scouts behind a curtain of muscle and fur.

The fabric of ourselves and the world surrounding. It can withstand the holes we punch with our canine teeth. It can withstand brittle candor and tough love. Truth is the only living god, to pretend that it’s otherwise snubs the sifted beauty, the sunken treasure hidden below shipwrecked skeletons, down in the muck.

Running and humming in the darkness. Running and humming in the darkness. Humid love blooms as hunger shoves wildly — desire ’til the day I die. Running and humming in the darkness.

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