The ghost hotel watches from the top of the hill. Failing lights from its windows define her Victorian features. Devil deer lurk in the dark, betrayed by the fire in their eyes. The building has vanished by the time we reach the summit. This happens every time we climb this hill, though once we glimpsed a field dotted with many small campfires. When we investigated there was nothing, no charred earth, no fire rings. We still feel ourselves surveilled by the unusually covert creatures populating the area. The cold embers of their prying curiosity determinedly pierce the scrubby thicket. As with the unidentified editor of the journal, their presence is well known but never clearly detected. The handwriting is always the same. The enigmatic notes tell parts of our story that we no longer remember. But they seem true. They fill the gaps between then and now, in a purely linear sense. These anxieties are pushed down again and we return to generating gentle reactive forces against the asphalt, producing propulsion across a now solid substrate. Daggers from a creeping moon penetrate the sparse layers of lenticular shrouds with a languid ardor for the cottonwoods that have become hard and dry in the passions of the wind. Perhaps these are John Lurie’s unhappy trees. They come with the world’s second shortest poem, about a sunset. But for now we watch the more familiar deer come and go with every swipe of snow across the driveway. They wander off upon the approach of the shovel and return when the shovel pushes a path through to the other side. Throughout the many repetitions of this process their behavior is the same. We consider the uncertainty principle to describe this but maybe it is just a Catch-22 thing; they will be out when somebody comes to see them, they will be in when nobody visits. Like the basement light of our new neighbors. Does it just happen to be on whenever we look in that direction and off at all other times? We may never know. And it has become warm enough for the flies to dance in the window casings. There will be snow. The poem: The sun set.
Peas and Hominy
Thanks for reading. Please hit the like, share, and/or comment buttons to help others find my work.
💜💜💜