mysticism – Page 17 – A Piece, of the Sky

There’s the rider.

The only constant is the horse and it’s always moving.

Ride down Main Street; pass in and out of the town.

Hear the hooves in the dirt.

Splash through the gully; stand in the stirrups like a jockey.

Stand up in the saddle. Put your full weight on the horse

Let it rear. Give chase.

Shoot out of town.

Ride down the canyon

into the ghostly horizon.

Down in the deserted places

there sits the owl and the cockatrice,

the stork and the dragon,

bones and lizards,

swine and ravens and unclean things.

When the horse dies, trod off

with graying clothes bleached by light

and shoes with soles that are falling off.

Gloves of thinning leather,

two silver pistols and spark and ash,

a target to shoot and never catch

and a hat that’s lost its firmness.

It’s not about the horse;

the horse isn’t the important thing.

Ride on forever and never die

even when arm bones fall apart.

Ride until outline, form and mold of body dissolves,

the water in the vessel pouring out,

unraveling large, sharp shards.

Nothing is permanent.

Ghosts are meant to exist in the desert.

A person of light stands on the black shelf above, beckoning;

it’s a form of someone who exists below.

There’s a human outline in the dust,

a space created by the wind,

a hole in the maelstrom.

There’s a rock formation that looks like a person,

There’s a person glowing in the night vision binoculars.

Run down the road at night.

Squint and never really see.

For every person out there,

there is a second person out there

living out the same exact life as you.

Out here, there’s only two.

A satellite dangles in the cold.

The skull of the sky shudders and turns overhead,

An arrow of light strikes in the darkness,

a thread pulling you over the gravel;

it’s pulled by an outline, a space,

stepping over clouds and stars.

Run, crawl, gallop and scramble

over dusty mountains to get there.

Give chase to the end, blue and frozen,

drenched in snow and ice.

Someone is flashing like a lighthouse

but soon that outline will disappear.

Wotan, Odin

The mist came down from the wooded mountains, hugging the gnarled slopes. Once over the lake, the hoary cloud ghosted the glass-like surface. Ran and Alli rode their mountain bikes through twists and turns in the Maine woods. As the sun set and the first stars came out, they braked on the gravel beach of the lake.

The body of water lay behind Kaan’s cabin. Kaan and Beth were in the city for the weekend, for a book signing Beth was doing for the second edition of her novel.

They built a small fire on the beachfront. “Why don’t you release another edition of your book?” Alli asked, “It has been five years, hasn’t it?”

Ran snapped a handful of small twigs in half, to better feed them to the flames, “I just never thought about it. I didn’t feel like I had anything new to say.”

“That’s alright,” Alli said, hanging a pot of water over the fire, “I probably won’t make it out to my five-year college reunion. Sometimes, even a half decade later, you haven’t really taken everything in.”

Ran nodded. They brought wooden chairs from the porch over to the water’s edge. The forest grew darker. The moon rose, like an ice crystal hanging in the hard, unyielding cobalt sky.

Alli went into the cabin for some ingredients. She cooked the tagliatelle al dente, strained it and placed it in two bowls. Ran added some prepared foie gras and shaved a few large flakes of black truffle on top of the mounds of pasta.

They sat watching the clouds float through the blue-violet milieu, eating their supper and listening to the lull between the lapping of the waves.

“Do you ever think of Dallas?” Ran wondered, “Sorry to ask about exes, but you mentioned she had come back to New York?”

Alli shook her head, “No, it’s OK. Kaan never saw her again after that. Yes, I think of her sometimes but really not that much.”

“Were you ever really that close?” Ran opened a bottle of wine.

Alli sighed, “I felt we were – but of course, I was wrong.”

Ran handed her a glass, “Do you think she’s sorry for what she did to you?”

The fruity notes in the merlot were sweet and dry, “No, she doesn’t think about me.”

The first trills of the nightingale sounded through the wood. A group of crows on the other shore rose up, and flew off, in the direction of the mountains.

Ran poured herself another glass, “If I met her, what would you want me to say to her?”

Alli was leaning deep into her chair. She blanched, balancing the wine glass on her belly, over the flannel shirt she was wearing, “Nothing. It’s over. I don’t think about it anymore.”

Another crow cawed in the distance, across the water. An otter slipped into the waves, not far from them, crawling off a log, its serpentine body leaving nary a ripple in the water.

“There must be something you want to say to her. Something that needs to get out.”

Alli closed her eyes, sinking deeper into the cushions, “Not a thing. I’ve moved on. I have you.”

Ran drained her glass, “You know that I care for you, right?”

Alli didn’t open her eyes, “Always.”

The shadows joined the night. The bulbous moon, threw the two figures into sharp relief. The otter slunk back out of the water, sleek as a feline, hair slicked back against its minute skull.

jotun-frost Titans