MUTE VISION

Transformational, geopsychic, a habit of centuries vanishing into thin nothingness

leaves not much except everything. A game of chess unfinished. The long train of camels passes over dunes, a trail of coffle-chained ancestors has climbed up and out of a hole, into the ozone. Not that I have freed them, which is more than absurd, but that simply conditions have changed.

 The air, though sometimes smoggy, has cleared. Falling through the cracks would have come closer to describing it, or one of the unintended benefits of civilization, usually judged misfortune.

Just as some are ground to dust or splattered with explosives, all for no reason, still others are left on sandbars along the edges. No reason.

Everyone wants a reason. No matter what. What people really want is a good story, fairy tale, diatribe love/hate anchor branch offered from shore. As conditions change.

The phase of the moon has to do with this. We all feel it, ships at sea, astronauts scarfing gravity-free packets of space rations. Anchors away boys and girls, rabbits at sea! There they go. Right down beneath decks to the hold, right along the keel, to that spot where nothing moves. The clock not ticking. And after falling through the cracks, lucky people find it. Where the chess game comes to a halt.

Well actually, what has luck got to do with it?

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The day is tinged, drifting with subtle scents. Vagaries of the calculable moon chase ripples from a dream. A bull fight: -- Torro! passing glint of steel – a butterfly . . .

How fragile, the fundaments of existence – you supposed Leaders, what will you promise for tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, floods and lightning? Anyone can see where the real power lies. Ask if I believe you. And all you Existentialists, who disguise philosophy to masquerade as literature, which you confuse with life, I nonetheless agree: beliefs are not real. Out of the storm drain at night, racoons rise like Halloween ghosts, squealing. Order, purpose and meaning are written on your wailing wall, so of course it's all going to hell in a honey bucket.

Can't you people laugh? You politicians, who will muster forces, and the climate will do what no one believes, typhoons and the lot making pikers of all, the butterfly effect ignored.

It's right here, what was missed, in plain view so to speak, though it can't be spoken, and invisible to those who live legacies. To ride the mind of distraction, study Steinbeck's turtle. Lady Hummingbird’s magic name is a temporary convenience, good for just a blink of her wings. The power of moon force and scent is muted, usually ignored.

So all you Leaders versus Existentialists, let's hear it, put your hands together for . . .

what? You can't speak?

Can't laugh?

Actually, this person does exist. For about a wing beat. Observes Tabitha asleep on her lawn chair cushion, who is observed by a bird on the fence. An undeniable scent of something in the air, and how delicious that we don't know what it is . . .