The Blazing Sun

Before first light, stage one of the three, first light, second light, and third, so, it was before, and so, it was in darkness, I began to follow my path I take through the narrow forest that runs the center of the peninsula, from its widest inland, to the thinness of a single tree where it meets the water. In the dark before the first light, in its narrows it could be a thousand wide, as sky is black this night, and I as always dress myself in dark stained top and legging, and dark cord wrapped around me like on a spinning top from the old house. I move, but not too fast, because it is so cold now and, I move sloe in the cold, and every other thing too, moves as slow, so nothing threatens me so much, as I am in the dark too, and there’s nothing here to see into the dark. I used to have a tool to help me drive away the things at night, but nothing now remains, the cold has made them slow, and thicked their blood so all their hearts exploded inside of them, and it was like a festival of local gods, to see the pack at night, surrounded our pathetic single flame and us around it just like every after dark, and they moved in to wait, and then one of them cried like elders in their bed and fell, and others too, and chests blew open like an engine lost its oil and it burst, and we could smell the gore and see how wet it was by our single flame,  and other hot blood night thing too, and by the light of second light, we butchered ground and ate them all. Nothing after that could keep us whole, and I remember how we parted, and that after it, a sadness came, the binding of us for so long by fear of night, and now so brave, that we could venture out and find our way alone, but then, when fortune came, no one to tell, or hear, or care that you might bring good fortune to the rest, because, the one was all…

     The other things that followed the night things of course, were not a threat to us, to me, and after they were gone, I found, I missed the things that waited on them, and things they waited on, that I could not, they became so great in number, they would threaten worse than night things, as they ate and ate and ate – and I had little left, and I could never kill enough of them to stop them eating. I think, it was my fault, maybe, had I hunted, maybe had I felt my blood and killed as many and had a joy in it, and maybe, had we stay a group after all the night things fell, we might have killed well enough, as we could organized, as we had done when we had razed our father’s camp-.  But, I will near the water soon, the tip, and hidden all the way by dark, though I know, it is no matter, nothing waits on me, but still a habit, and now, maybe I enjoy the feel that I am as a night thing too, and feel more than before my blood.

     So who are you, I write to on these rocks at mid day after all my light is on my back, and warming on my welts, well, I think I have no concern for that, I write because before, I wrote, before, I did it for a few and then to tell myself in case it was that I forgot, and still it may be that case, that later I forget, and I can come down to the ledge and see what I had written back when I remembered  things to write, and it will be like there are others, not like me alone, but someone far away and even far in time who writes to me, and if it is that I forget, each day then it will seem I write again, up on these rocks, and I may even think, how good it was, that once another was, perhaps, and, not only one.  And I have made philosophy of this night move – and, here is first light, touching tree tops as I break on through the end of the line, and there are all my stones, and down below, I’ll climb there now and feel the cold glass on my feet, and look through many inches feet and yards, I always see there something new, a thing from water stuck as if all suddenly ice or amber, but as clear as window panes at the old house, they are stuck, maybe, for ever, for all time, below me, as a look, below my feet, and even, I am thinking, some of them are looking as if they are surprised - . I slide alone a smooth shallow – it is always tempting to descend, to let go and shoot down and over some edge, especially when it is wet with dew, the glass is like a slide, but sometimes it is not so wise, as pieces break and hold an edge just like a knife, and if your weight would pass across it, you would find yourself not one, but two.

     Ah, I resist like many times, and glad I did just now, as I am turning around a rise and I am seeing a sharp transparent post that somehow formed in just the time of one whole day, as nature shifted maybe earth, I think I felt a shift a day ago in early night. And this was made, this spear. So glad that I resist the fun I could have thought I had until I met with this. And there it is, for what I come, that silver edge. The green sun comes now, and it catches on the silver edge, and flashes in my eyes. How I learned to love the sight, the first thing in my day that makes me live and grow and quiet me when I have long in waiting in the night for morning so that I would long instead to pass away, if I could never taste again the metal and the sun that flavored it with light. Then before I put myself to it, I kneel, and touch it with my hand, and bow my head, and am silent for a moment as we used to be, in our old houses, and in places where we were together, and I even think, for a moment, together, us, together. Like before. Like before anything changed, and sometimes I will even get a little drunk on the feeling, before I press my mouth to the silver and the green where the sun hits it best, and rest my hands on where it is cold, and my mouth on where it is hot, and take in all the goodness that it gives, this single sliver that remains from all the blazing of the sun.   Lewis Gesner

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Invisible

Night trees’ cold descending hands, and knotty fingers pull at me, and scratch my skin above my ribs beneath my coat, above the long black cloth I wear that streams me to the rain and wind, and secrecy of seeing me, and darkens to a mythic line of something seen or maybe not, but all of either, fully there identified or something from the mind. I wouldn’t hold on close to me, with mental pictures, as I move across the field, from once past all the trees, and unprotected of the wind and water falling, and the pitch of cold and star concealing clouds so no one knows what night or when in season I was seen, so nothing fixes memory, and lets it shift to years before, or in the grandfathers’ time that I was seen – and this, a trick of the night, is taken to advantage by the cleaver in their mind and used as shield and disguise and as cover so invisible they pass, invisible, we move and live, things transparent to the memory, transparent to the mind, invisible to the heart and soul. I wonder, should I pass a house, I throw a thing into a window, break a pane, or roll a rock across a porch, and high up on the roof, I and a sod into the chimney there, and flee away, but not too fast so someone maybe sees, transparent flap of cloak as I am gobbled by the air.  I am running in this night, I am, the animal in this night, first a road between long streets, the houses stone and low in older style, and red paper lanterns outside hanging blowing just a little then some water in the air that blows like bullets and I try to miss them, then back to the forest and the field with covered sky, my cloak, my veiled illusive being moving to the place where tar and water sand and burning paper smells, and runs in narrow hand cut gutters in a granite stone, in blocks they hauled to here where once a prison stood, and then it fell, and here, where someone bought and broke and moved the stone, and you can still be caught on rusted metal bars that jut in 2 directions up from where they pass in stone to air, like make the cloak like mine that night is wearing as a danger zone of quills and barbs and nettles for your hair and on your skin, or maybe if you fall to thrust into your chest and pierce your heart -. And here, I rest, and sit up on that block of stone, and maybe feed some cold canned alcohol into my blood, and listen to the wind is building wind to listen to the wind is growing as a fattened leach on fearful shrouded ancients in their houses, pictures of their matron on the wall, holding silent vigil in a chair too cold to move once settled on the seat, a dim light thrown from flames of yellow orange red that twist around each other as uneven matters mix and make a gas and soot, manure piled near the back, a toad is finding how to make its way across the barren yard between the house and field and woods, and I, I lurk invisible and vapor here, and like a chant, I move repeated like a breath is over and begun again. I am in my place, full of sound and silence too, invisible and blocking every view. If I stop my thought, the swirling picture holding here will fall out on the ground, so I resolve to turn and walk and run and turn again so never to arrive, and I am holding up the world, and every thing is hanging from my endless clothesline as it passes through the hues and nuanced spaces of this solitary place where I will stay until the day-   Lewis Gesner