Tonight we close the bookstore, a warm privacy of illumination
clustered around and around us. Our hunger pours over pages
of words, gobbled down with sips of coffee. This pleasant frolicking
lightens steps taken to the field, and the heavy ones that follow.
All evening long our boats with oars drift through dark waters, rippled currents edged in deep night. By morning our bedclothes are soaked, hulking vessels chugging towards the shore. Our footprints once threaded through watery pastures have all gone, leaving no trace or sound.
Alone in the field, our sycamore resolutely stands—a sentinel guarding moments still sacred, altared before us, silences of unspoken words when I knelt before you, made the scream rise gurgling from the back of your throat’s delicious and silky darkness; an offering, a receiving.
The wind is hoarse from wailing all night, wheat threshed upon the ground. From here we see each marker, every dog-eared page, words risen prayers before these life altars. One sleep passes into another sleep, days tumbling end over end. Under the torpid darkness of trees the body slowly heals.
We have forgotten all words, silence except the rustling of browned stalks, the winter wheat extending its hairy bristled arms to hold us longer in the field. How often we go back to the sycamore, guarding the field’s edge. Our words are all gone—spilt out over our lips spread wide open to take, but what to give?
The hope of trees, new leaves.
Well said.