Endless Search

I come into your world.
I bring what I know.
The open door leads to a warm hearth and narrow bed.
I see in you the life I never had.
The hot cup of coffee for breakfast.
The sweet smell behind the ears, mended laundry.
Your face is missing in the red rocks of still giants.
The range and nights of smoky fires by a river.
You cannot be here, just as I could never be there.

I can not join your world.
I am gone.
I’ve stayed away too long,
I let the wind tear apart my cheeks,
let the moon see my secrets.
The open night sky has sewn itself into me,
making me its own,
making me a man of the wild,
unfit for the walls of your house,
the sweet soapy smell of your skin.

I have stayed away too long, but maybe I was never there.
A stranger, a wild child itching to break free of mother’s arms.
A lone drifter.

I wander.
I look for home, for rest, for the end;
but they are not in houses, in open arms.
They are not in anything I seek,
but still I look.
Behind the mountain, across the stream,
under rocks, in the houses of other men.
I can hear voices, a howling wind, screams of women I loved but never knew.
I wander, searching.

I am the ghost without eyes.
The spirit who grabs onto any change of season, yet finds no rest.
There is no home, but my quest remains.
The endless search for those things I believe are real.

There is no home.
No destination, no goal.
I am a drifter. Searching.
Sometimes finding that glowing piece of light,
but it melts as the day turns into a black canvas,
and then I feel it again,
the shrill high call of the wind.
The shadows, the swirling stories of open fires and sunrise over the mesa.
I cannot be of another world,
I am a searcher.

The scene is dark, the home is not mine.
I am of the wind and its journey entwines with mine.
I am of the sun, moving always.
Shadows are all I know.

I search because I know nothing else.
Could it be any other way?
A home and kin and rocking chair by the fire?
A woman smelling of sunshine?
A child with my eyes?

I wander because I know no other way.
I am of the light,
of the places without walls,
of the fire without end.
The search with no conclusion
the seeking without end.

I am the searcher.
I cannot be found.
I cannot find.
I can never rest.

Fading Light

I lay on my bed as the last of the sunlight fades, giving us, this small little planet, its final heroic effort of the day. In a dim room, bright orange light streams in through the window, hitting just three different spots on the walls. I lay on the bed, just minutes out of the shower, my hair now wet and cold. My pale legs are covered in oversized black sweats with jaggedly cut ends and a man’s thin striped pajama top.

I look at the last bits of light, feeling suddenly aware of the calm chamber.

My hands rest on my stomach, my feet are extended, supported by a jumble of three blankets that cradle them. Tiny gurgles call to my fingers below my pillowy stomach skin.

“Just be here,” I think to myself.

My chest fills with air, then deflates slowly.

I look to the wall on my left, the wall my bed presses against. There is a rectangular orange-gold piece of light, like a bright framed piece of sunlight on the wall. Cutting through the center of the light is the dark shadow of a cross. I stare.

“So pretty, I should get my camera…” But I don’t move. My hands stay on my stomach, my legs remain in the folds of soft blankets.

The cross, such an intense symbol; a torso and head, two arms extended, two feet pressed together as one. I see Jesus on a hill, I see myself in the morning, just after 7. How long did it take for people to realize the shape could be used for killing? For the structure of torture?

Perpendicular to the wall is the French glass door that leads to my kitchen. The top half of the door is bathed in soft yellow light, though the top-center of the door is glowing orange in the sun’s last rays. I realize the light is coming through my small window (parallel to the wall with the cross), hitting the doorway, then the glass is reflecting the image on the wall.

I look back and forth between the wall and the door, not needing to turn my head.

To the right of the door, directly in front of my body, on another small section of wall, are a few fragmented pieces of light, long jagged rectangles and bent circles and little speckles.

I think about the photographer I used to work for, Emily Payne. “It’s called the sweet light.” I can hear her say it, holding her big black camera in her hands. I imagine photographers around the world waiting for this time of day, waiting till they have the ‘right light.’ Do they stay indoors like inverted vampires, waiting only for a special hour? How many moments do they let pass? Is everything overlooked until the sweet light emerges?

I look up to the cross and the door. Has the light changed? It must have, the sun is fading by the minute. I search the color of the door. It’s just a bit paler. Still bright, but lacking intensity. It’s fading in front of my eyes and I can’t even watch it, I can’t see its fading unless I look away and then look back.

I turn to the wall. The cross has lost an arm. It looks like a T on its side. I should have gotten my camera. I could have written something about this and I would have had the perfect pictures to go along with it. I stay in bed. It’s too late now. “Just watch it, it’s fading away.”

How often had I missed this light? Maybe it would be the same tomorrow. Or nearly the same. The earth would not tilt too much in one day. What if I had not laid down? Would I have just sat at the desk, doing something, oblivious to the light around me? How many times have I done that?

I look up again, the light is dull.

“Just be still and watch…” I keep wandering away, I can’t even watch the light change for a few minutes without drifting.

The cross has become a single vertical line. The French door creaks open, pulled by the crack of the open window 15 feet away. As the door comes forward, the cross shifts, creating one solid black line, then another slightly lighter shadow line behind it.

Then the door creaks closed, and a single line emerges on the cross once again. The door’s bright orange light has faded almost entirely. I know that soon it will be completely gone, maybe then I’ll wonder what happened, how it left so fast.

I look over at the speckles of light on the wall perpendicular to the cross. The light there has faded too. Watch it. “Don’t take your eyes off it, watch what’s left.” I hold my eyes. Its fading…but a part of me cannot believe it. I realize I can barely watch it straight on. It’s almost painful. Why can I only see something changing if I look away?

The door is now dark. The cross is gone, and just a few sprinkles of light remain on the wall next to the door. I watch them, intent, finally holding my attention fixed as they fade. Dark, darker, then they are gone.

The phone rings.

Day And Night

She watched his smile fade, the corners of his mouth dropped slightly and the song he had just sung faded into a melodic memory. His face softened and she watched the wind blow away the last remains of his overt delight. She watched the rainbow of his mouth turn from a Technicolor pageant of beet red and hazard-cone orange into a muted palette mixed with white acrylic. She watched the fading glory, the spiral of rainbow dye that moved into oblivion with each second that passed. How long had she watched his lips? The endless transforming of emotion that played with the muscles of his face.
She sat on the bed, an orbit of delight herself, beaming in white and blue as she sat before him. She was smooth and nearly naked in her white and pink lace panties. She sat crossed legged, slightly embarrassed by her lack of graceful ballerina posture, yet unable to will her muscles and bones into spinal alignment. She watched him and the vain angel on her side tugged at her thoughts, “Sit straight! You look horrible!” And although the same thought entered over and over, it blew through her mind like a fluffy cloud. When his smile at last faded like a fiery sun, she brought her eyes to his, feeling the endless river of power that seeped from him. She sucked him out, pulling him inside by concentrating on the back splash of energy. The soft bed accepted her weight and she fell deeper into it. She sat there.
How long had she been there, watching his smile fade into a soft mouth that bore no particular expression, but was rather a statement in contentment? She had nowhere else to go, rather, she had no where else she wanted to go and this bed, this small room stuffed with books and made smaller and warmer by a heater that whirred throughout the night and continued with the day was the whole of the universe. His eyes and mouth, they were every star, every undiscovered sun.
Outside, she felt that it was light. She felt the bright whiteness of a cloud covered sky infiltrate the room with its sense of urgency. Light being the indicator of action, the time to drive and work and run errands. But she sat and held his stare and practiced moving against the rules of nature. Light was to see his smile. Light was to see the contour of his flesh expand from thigh to chest. Light was needed for holding his gaze.
When the dark would come, perhaps then she would rise and take the memories of his smile with her. She would dress, covering her white panties and sculpting her breasts into more recognizable shapes. She would find her shoes and pull up her mismatched socks and head out into the night. She would drive, up the hills that overlooked a sleeping city and insistent street lamps buzzing for the attention of moths. She would drive in silence, holding the scent of him on her mouth until she found the small house
tucked into the curve of the street. She would wait in her car, listening for the sounds of other approaching cars and then, after determining she was all alone under a cloud-covered black night, she would exit and walk across the street, entering her small room. She was then ready for a new round of work to begin.

Night Time Garden

With reluctance the wooden door opened, swollen from days of rain, it releases, moaning like a woman. From the safety of the garage she looked into the deep black of evening, not daring to step past the doorway.
The night was more than black, it was thick as ink and high fog passed through the bare tree tops like spirits on a mission. Calm and secluded, hidden under silky wings of darkness was the sacred space of the garden.
Silent to her ears, but not at all empty. There were worlds within worlds in the rectangular enclosure.
Times that both began and ended, that moved up like a whirling dervish into the atmosphere and destinies that spun though five thousand dimensions simultaneously.
Rationally, she recognized it as the space she was used to working in, but her heart felt the reconfiguration.
There was a new form and entity at work. It was in use.
Although the shrubs of sage and tall trees were barely recognizable silhouettes in the dark, she could feel the fullness of the garden.
There were dancers and chants.
Drums and daggers.
Worlds, universes, beings eternity.
It was all there, held beautifully within the sacred chamber. Swirling fire gods and people of stone. Maidens and magicians, people and forms with no name that travel among time like hidden black birds of evening.
Assembled, each working separately and as one.
It was no longer a realm for the human, and she knew.
She smiled. "Beautiful", she thought.
There was singing she could not hear and low rhythms she didn’t dance to…but it all came in, like a well pointed laser to the heart.
She turned around in awe and caught his smiling eyes, "yes" he said.