HERESAY EIGHT

to focus on nothing in particular, there is a place

deep in the spine between the belly button and

      the tail bone

when all else fails it has nowhere else to go

Given just this pencil and a sheet of paper, it is possible to download the universe, though it would seem a mosquito on the back porch screen. Files of galaxies and river stones are all washed up. On down to leaves of grass in buffalo plains. All of which might be something of an understatement

How could one mash up the Winchester Mystery House, its staircase to nowhere, with a gaggle of geese trying to outrun one of those rifles? There are so many impossibilities that are just crossing the street. And why cross?

To give some shape to it, the shapeless records are stored in everything. Though who would get it if I just pointed out past the Hubble telescope, into what many people imagine is empty space. But there is no space, except that thinking makes it so. A pontifical mashup if ever there was. So many words just to fill an empty tin cup.

what burns

goes up in smoke

and stays there

Iforgot to say: Humanity and birdology and cat's paws in the dark of night, all about ready to merge, with the other side of the tracks still on the other side. And so is this. You can still get hit by a train, but not very likely after you see it coming before it gets here. So the picture needs a new frame. Look over there, right behind the stairway to nowhere. It opens on its own schedule.

__0__

You are invited to the Chamber of Emptiness, which brokers everything. It brooks no profit, so shield your eyes. In the staid language of my forebears: What the hell were you looking for?

What it needs is the well burnished glow of a wild horse butterfly. There. Now it's had its say. Clears the planetary register, and the buckboard can haul a load of weeds all stacked in neat bundles, looking like sheaves of wheat. The shadow play is flurried in a giggle of firefly gnats all dancing currents of Sophocles updrafts. You never know how it's going to turn out, just following the turns. It speaks toad.

The old normal wasn't all that easy, either. I remember a representative of both, sleeping in Esterbrook's barn – the retired fire engine, a pumper, wooden spoke wheels, which spoke its history into shadows. And I listened. We were simpatico. Energies of a past crisis fallowed in waiting. What we knew, and what we still know to this day, though the barn has been redeveloped for a retirement condominium complex, with special property tax easements. What we still share is an appreciation for rocks. Some more than they seem, only sitting quietly in their long seasons, amongst spirits unseen, intuited past the noise of traffic, smell of raw asphalt, and rumble of earthquakes. No doubt prompting a yawn from the air conditioned sanity of usual minds.

are we finished

yet?

So all's well that ends nowhere --

      I think I lost my train of thought

           hallelujah! We're free!