31 December 2018

Postcard 153

It has been that we are base, venal and mean.
Sure, I have some flesh between my teeth
The world is wilderness.

We got beer-can cannons,
heterodoxing any priest we see
We got streetlight sway.
Red means burn baby burn
Jersey barriers & California speed rails.

Neon baby, metal fucking halide, L.E.D.
Light em up out on hwy 80, bright as freeway night
Build our walls up from the air, cluster bombs and tracer lights
Green is go, pickup baby, shrapnel, fucking IED.

This land is my land, built on venereal,
diesel and steam. This land is your land.
It has been that we are invasive, noxious fumes and weeds.
I have this wont wash red stuff all over me,
on my hands, I mean...

flyover highway walls dropped all around.
Arc light, glass blown sand, twin overhead cam
glass packed -- clear empty and serene

Postcard 152


circle six
sixty rad
symmetry
hexagon's
space suffice
structure strong
shape secure
wields security
all sides hard
held bees know
a bee knows
nothing gets
loose nine eight
three neat hectare
acres to ares
bound by bind
brick wire bar
twine zip tied
secure in case
just encase
cease bees no
he can she
can't they cannot
mark strike
line by line
circle six
Hecate cross
persist no
bees regular
cyclic tangential
tile the plane
tessellate
aegis by refuge
criss cross christ!
whirl refused line
tight efficiency
no bees know
isotox by
isogen beckon
Hecate flame
all this know
Queen of Drones
is no queen







18 December 2018

Postcard 151


It is a strange kind of special to be, he tells me, and takes a drink
I don't mind it, and even most the old hands would rather not
These trees here, he gestures before us with the glowing bottle,
I'd take em out. Then we'd see the stars
The trees, unmoving, hold the glow of our woody fire
He had been talking to me about killing cows
I had not said a word and maintained my silence
I wondered about the trees
Every herd needs to get culled, he went on,
cleaned out of the ones got no more use
His eyes were glassy in this outward introspection
I just walk up and do it quick
No feelings about it at all
I'm not pathological. I've thought about it
He, again, brings bottle to his lips
I feel things, but you've got no use, its time to be out of the way
Its a strange special to be, but its got to be done, culling the herd
We sat for a bit in quiet
the fire's crackle
the bottled swish
His eyes were hard and dry, but his mouth flowed wet
filling the dark low places around us
Cull is about the worst thing you can call a man
Make a lot of enemies that way, call a man cull

Postcard 150


My lover's hands are imminent
They are a net of fine scars
My lover's hands disappear in me
Is it they curl with that morning pain
They are always set there like dusty sacks

My lover's hands are concrete
He spreads them out before me 
on a desk beneath his dusky eyes
The desk creaks, a clear plane 
beneath them do not

The morning sun is dusty
His hands are clean. He 
washed them in the workshop 
sink with rough soap
Everything that set them there
was imminent

His hands, my lover's, are contingent
It was a certain blade that cut
this board intimate
another blade, bitter blood
that snapped

My ring wraps his finger. It is
the only ring, right now
that softly raps

That scar was first sight of blood
the only child behind his gentle eyes
The other knuckle strip a cloud there,
a man's weak moment. 
My lovers' hands are imminent

12 December 2018

Postcard 149

I am a sea of faces beating a shoreline
I am a spume of seeds
There is no me
I am stone washed to sand
I am the womb's empty recieve
Cupful of wind, bundle of sea
I am an eon of abandoned bones
& shells bleached white
I am tide made dolomite
The intention of ocean, 
resistance of ground
There is no me
I am the light release of fluvial plume 
I am the seed splitting sprig and spray
A bushel of sprouts is not a tree
An ocean is not a basin full of streams
There is no me
Calm careless erosion, 
ground-splitting lust and need
I am a sea of faces beating a shoreline
a hard shelled seed of lust and need
Does rounded sand resist compression?
Does bloom of clouds desire depth of sea?
There is desire. There is no me
There is resist. There is no me
There is comfort. There is no me
There is pain. There is no

01 December 2018

Postcard 148

You are a stampede of feelings
Every element bites at you
Drawn like a card
quartered like a long year
Each degree of sun overcomes specifically
a goddamned stack of merciless nows
Is it those old solar demons trample you --
                          primal shadows of youth?
No. Its your daemon team who's hooves beat dust
                                     in ecstasy and pain

Still, you sit in room longing to lay
down beneath a dozen pairs of caring hands
How awkward you read your skin's own glyphs
Clay polished silver, arms stretched and bent
All the cards seem misprint and
read best like art in cave-light
Each symbol pulls at you like sharp thread
from each point your body, head, your heart
And you are a cascade of fingers on a taut stringed harp
You are confounded -- inside out
In truth, you are body-holding sky
the sun, your beating heart

25 November 2018

Postcard 147



Not in you but of you. Breath communes
The sun yearns red
Great storms batter the eastern seaboard
The west burns earnestly toward sun setting end
We are not unfamiliar with his desires
Each day some burning man at his own red meridian
loads up and shines down bullets, pitiless
Down and down, we are groomed for this
A pitiful man holds downward his gun
The sun seeks red; the pitiful man seeks gray
The sky moans with ash and haze

Not in you but of you. Breath communes
We have been groomed for this
It is pitiless how long and how
the child seeks love from her tormentor
Lead hot sun and crouch behind
Mask on because breath communes
Active shooter drills, the sun's own red desire
is a gray earth, a charnel house
And who loves color like a child?
But unburned waters rise, subsume
Where is color loving child?
Where is gray man
Where is rapacious sunlight?
Subsumed

Not in you but of you. Breath communes
alas, submerged
But all colors start in lightless deep
From spark, from movement,
from vivacious seek

05 November 2018

Postcard 146

The story so far is bleak. here is reprieve:
Writers often do despair of staring blank at blank white sheet
The naked onus is to fill judiciously
To silent say what is a need, no more no less
To mete out hard truth and fragile beauty like rare thread

But you will seldom hear despair of staring darkly into inky well
The truth is there, that every word drawn out of it is destined to fail
The truth, I fear, is bleak. The well is most opaque,
into which a fragile truth might, like a penny wish, sightless sink

Ink black, paper white, the writer knows his own hubris
and fears any hope is a like mistake
But must hold truth that blackest ink and whitest sheet
are last exhale of pulpy carbon tree

Poets task is not as engineer. Ink in words
is only slowed and followed spill and swell
Lines laid down like ordered thought are dark water's
cutting courses to root rich earth and thirsty fertile ground

The story so far is bleak, yet it persists
of its own power, not by me but through
with the same natural mystery that drive toward dark well
both sunlit stream and obscured roots of tree

Postcard 145



We know it is too late in our cities,
seamed and chipped, utilities choking choking
We know it is too late in our nitrous fields
collapsing into blue-green waterways
We know it is too late upon our greasy seas

We know that our mighty, ocean striding derricks
stand on feet iron-oxide red
Our valley spanning damns rest on feet of clay
Drown the wise men, may as well
Let their harsh God be their judge

And we know it is too late for lightest sky
Turquoise daughter will not ascend, broad winged upon,
now white, pelican, she must at last return to ground
Life itself is, there, tenuous choking choking,
pale & self consuming

Is it too late there?
There is a pimp and there is a whore
He cuts a dripping peach
between his stained and crooked teeth
he sucks last pith from pitted core

He spits it out to speak while he beats her
you bitch you cunt you piece of shit
Why does pimp hate whore? Why
do slugs use razor tongues
to drill in shielded shell?

Is it too late, turquoise daughter for sperm and egg?
Is it too late for germinate seed?
Too late even, for dormant tuber & wind-held spore?
Too late, the mollusc pimp will spit
Too late and more. Too late and more

23 October 2018

Postcard 144



Please tell your children that you are coming soon
Please tell our children that you are
Please tell your children of your imminence

Last night a sickly light scarred
the low hung steaming sky --
a load shot into the seeded sky

Tell me your children are imminent

In this morning's feeble dawn,
eyes old and wise, wings
spanning three meters wide,
the great grey pelican -- ocean's hound --
filled it's gulping beak the final time

And then, mercilessly, Leviathan,
oil covered -- a suffocating new blubber --
blood plumbed with mercury and lead
rolled its eyes back in its head, white
ribbed belly stretched to convecting winds,

Today is merciless. Wisdom is dead
Please tell our children anything

They are compelled to scratch
their secret name in open osseous sand --
our children -- exposed and bounded by
the scaly crissing crossing trails
of slugs, mucous webs

Our children signed a blind consent
and they will desert wander
they will our debts pay
They will grow mute illiterate

They will be burdened by old laws
scratched in cuneiform upon
chipped slabs of clay
They have signed away
in aggregate, inheritance

Please tell them their secret names
Please let our children know
the fertile laws of nature will
supplant the fetid laws of man

06 October 2018

Postcard 143

The old birds move across the sky
they look down, lantern-like
at weary angles with the weary world obtuse
She follows them with long strides. She shears
She pursues strident and acute

The paper clothed ground peels up
and flickers like grey flame
Decrepitude falls away
flutters like old lace

Her legs lift ponderous like wings
She is leaving but wishing won't make it so
One by one the wings collapse and
fall along guide wires arsenic and lead
Still, she persists her vom'tous slog
near still against the blasted sun

The bird and her describe a whirl against itself
Then whirl against the broken back of world
-- all its armatures corrupt
its chemical sky collapsing into sea
The firmament slides deleriously away
Guide-wires burn and snap like filaments
Legs and wings astride as if willing
only made it so, they are away

But look, a smudge across the rarefied
A listless smile that is a primeval tusk
and two black shines that are
mockeries of eyes
The stillborn beast remains, a stain
and like a slug, consumes the world decay

There is a bright white -- a pelican
astride being of legs and wings
And there is a sallow white that is
universal consumption, a fade


03 October 2018

Postcard 142





She comes to a cityscape.
The world cannot help but change.
Everyone and everything pushes out.
The city has burst unfilled,
a hollowscape.

This was a city of change.
Never the same stream, 
can't go home again, 
look on desolation angel.


Wide avenues lead to center, radiate
Only laterals crowd with argument and debris
No one, nothing meets or challenges her
but the blasted glass
ground beneath her feet

The sentinels are empty and everything 
remains is scurry scurry
Heat is frivolous
spent without movement - tangled

Everything pushes out 
against what it may find
looking out with 
city center empty eyes

She stands at the center that is like a weak star
Broad clear avenues radiate like light
did it explode? did it vaporize?
did it collapse?

She walks upon ashes and looks around 
clear blue. no second sight
The beast has been still-born and yet 
has lurched away, pushing out.

She feels the threat of violence inevitable
That is one thing overcome by another


Push turned inward.
She breaths it finely in

Her hands are metal black
what did she touch?
Somewhere deep, there must be clay and hummus
untouched untrammeled unstreaked

The suicide air lays acid down
from chromium clouds
from quicksilver skies
The earth pushes up its alkali

A shadow flits across her eyes
Then another and another still
Some ancient creatures cloistered up
ooze across the formless sun

The wings push down
push down Away
She pulls up her feet and follows
Every girl in this hostile world
needs walk on, every girl needs a dog

24 September 2018

Postcard 141


All things, beings all, are born clean into a well worn and weary world.
Stars glow red and every cell has death drive.

Rivers -- metal ochers, metal yellows -- like bony fingers reach to sea.
Big waters barely beat.
Big waters filled with skeletons of all things,
like old coral, oily algae green
And the surface is a sick skin,
a fever sweat for greasy rain-starved winds.

A new clear creature comes up from mud,
and squirms grub-like from sulfuric chrysalis of debris
She does not slouch toward pestilent future or from corruption of past
For a moment she is pure and unseen
She opens eyes as blue as treasure-held fragments of that old sky.

This world is putrid. Each step sucks up the smell of sour decay
each shuffle through the plastic shells of shotgun wadding,
old bent butts, of straws and bottlecaps, clears infertile crust away.
Each step pushes blood poison, brown and veined, up her legs

She moves to exhausted alkali -- the world as desiccate as leaves
She moves through and to a place where other beings might be or might have been:
the strange mindful intention of piled debris,
hard ground stained by dirty fires,
corners strewn with dried black chips of feces

Everything has one property to possess and share: every being has a smell
Every sheet of paper, bound and stacked, every book, broken spined and outcast --
all dim deciduous memories, trustee of image and word --
withers in the infrared and speckles green in mildew damp
and smells like old pornography

All things, beings all, are death drive born
seeking, starving for the echo source
of clear and bright and clean

19 September 2018

Postcard 140


Like everyone and everything, 
she was born of dusty effluent of morbid stars. 
She was carbon bright. 
The filament bridged and glowed. 

Like everyone and everything, 
she was born a bursting prophet of origin and eventuality. 
Rare to rich over-burn. 
She was born a single treed forest burnt crisp. 

Like everyone and everything 
she was born tossed and caught. 
From blank non-being into being. 
From blinding gestate to cold dark earth. A stone. 

Like everyone and everything, 
she was born to veiled nursemaids of pain and pleasure. 
One was called need, 
the other, want. 

Like everyone and everything, 
she was born crying out, to mark short span of being. 
Compressed together, 
screaming apart. 

Like everyone and everything, 
she was born fissured with impurity. 
That is the crack and split of 
pyrophytic seed. 

Like everything and every being, 
she was born highly charged. 
Repulse and attract imminent. 
A spark seeking the touch of circuit.

Like everything and every other being, 
she was born a one time thing, 
in everlasting experiment. 
With potential toward all else. 

Like everything and every being, 
she is diminished by neglect. 
As semi-precious as core clustered diamonds. 
As underfoot as turquoise.  

Like every being, 
she was born with unspoken name. 
Like everything, 
she was born without spoken name. 

Like everyone and everything that must be, 
she was born blankly 
grasping for a given name. 
Oh Turquoise Daughter.



10 September 2018

Postcard 139

The water moves down,
and because it moves together, it flows.
Every ripple is the power of some unseen thing, above as below.
Every swirl an unequal resistance. Still, it moves placid and smooth.
The morning clouds reflect.
A heron, great and blue, an egret, white, set themselves like caissons
along the east shore, hunting down in their own shadows.
The water only has depth straight beneath, in shadow.
Small flies in hordes waterskip erratic. The tension ennobles them.
It is an irritant to look upon, as if all skin can relate.
The slight breeze compels the clouds across the face of sky,
compels the cloud reflection, compels the water too.
The small hairs of my skin rise and join the leaves in sway.
Ants, of course persist. Countless things we cannot see:
retreat of silvering darkness from the face of the land,
ephemeral vanishing act of each drop of dew,
birdsong and birdsong and the subtle speak of sparrow fall.
And birdsong responds.
My mind too moves unseen, and I toss back a whistle.
A whistle too loud in chamber of head startles me.
The heron, the egret, irritable, take graceful wing,
move off and away like cats.
Their shadows too, leave unplumbed.
And the water moves clear, without volume.
The water moves unceasing,
turns blue against the sky

29 August 2018

Postcard 138


Thank you for the sweet oil of your fingers - anointing grace
Thank you for the gentle bite of your eyes - communion
And the quiet drinking in. The quiet drinking in
Thank your for the wiggle and squirm of conscience 
Is it ok is it ok - penance, reconciliation
Thank you for the held breath, 
The slight flow of blood and sweet chemicals - blessed blessed baptism
Thank you for closing warm hands, closing soft eyes
Closing sighing sighing mouth - initiate
Thank you for learning these words
For recalling me to yourself when I put them down - ordination
Thank you for the warmth of chaos put to order, of energy gathered and held
Of substance made relational, of warm bodied being holding true
Thank you for moving desperate through time to me in wild relation - wedlock
Thank you for holding this note, reading it in consideration, remembering me fondly
For finding meaning, for trying it though us, for being a being that can
Thank you for setting it down, for going on and away,
For packing up, for forgetting. A little entropy, a little death.



20 August 2018

Postcard 137

Doesn't it always come down to trees, to whom we are a quick irrelevance?
Fitting, fitting.    With my words I am trying a silence.
That is a quick irrelevance, but it proceeds.
With my words I am trying to name a silence.
A useless Adam.
Name the thing of tree.
Name the sky scratch vanishing.
Name the water wick defying gravity.
Oh dare name the strength of sway.
Name roots subliminal and name their speech unseen:
communing without glottal tongue what is, what has been, what will be.
Oh breathing being Adam, it always comes to breathing being of tree.
Be a silent breathing being. Speak with grounded toes.
Correlate irreverently. Humility of forest for the trees. 
Silence still the word proceeds. Silence and still the word itself.
Un-name the thing.
Un-name the rustle of the leaves.
Un-name the hungry sunward lean.
Un-name the self and finally
let there be no name said or heard for the great relief,
the bow-spring return, the twang and whoosh, that final breath of final fallen tree.
To dumb still Adam, alone before mute glory, it always come down to trees

Postcard 130


Walking the beach on a day of many grays, my wife and I came to a mermaid tangled in the sand. She was red as a selkie and spoke only in murmurs and sighs, that we knew. We freed her with ease and took her out to the surf where we were equals. She showed us many new and strange pleasures from the depths. We were, all three, careless in the low waves.
So illuminated and rapt of each others' company were we, that we decided to take her home. The mermaid did not dissent, so we wrapped her up and took her to our house.We had a large tank put in the living room where she would stay -- illuminated and blue. It was delightful. She waited for us while we worked and twirled and flirted with us from behind the glass. I kept the taste of salt upon my lips. Sometimes we would just watch TV though. My wife and I took turns cleaning the tank. It did grow trying. She would swim about, feather and tickle, while we worked. It was pleasant but frustrating. Otherwise, she would sit on the couch with my wife. This was intolerable. Imagine watching your partner roll and squirm from behind grungy glass while you cleaned floating excrement. Judging from my wife's irritability, she felt the same. We got a filter. We watched TV, but she needed attention still, batting her eyes, waving her gills. We tapped on the glass and waved. We blew her kisses. The filter broke. It got pretty bad. We hauled away the tank and moved her to the bathtub. We showed her how to run the water. We took baths with her. My wife grew jealous about the fairness of the baths, but I wasn't sure from what angle. We bickered about feeding her. We stopped taking baths altogether. We watched TV. One day a episode of Magnum P.I. reminded us of something, but we could not make out what. I got p from the couch and went into the bathroom. The bathtub was full. The water was green but empty. There was something dried crisp on the floor behind the heater.

05 August 2018

Postcard 136

On what land would we stand if we honored all our treaties, honored all our vows?
There are not enough downy blankets for this shattered scattered land.
What would be if our hands were strong but softly laid?
We could calm. We could calm slow waves.
A map. A map and empty rings. Fingerless hollow eternities
Drag up all the wire of grids and vertices.
Click click the collard cable's coil. The spool will snap unsewn.
What graft and crooked drafts have been obscured?
What little universes, glorious cosmos of life, have been deferred?
Our children? Children all caulked and cracked, stunted. Inured.
There's not enough whiskey in this world to cover bloody topography.
And what if we made a promise of fidelity? And we held to truth in troth?
What shine! Oh hear us:
Cynic slosh. Halogen twinkle. Nylon dross. Patent leather plastic gloss
There's not enough sleep for knife-light dreams

30 July 2018

Postcard 135

The little boy who's parents were lost at sea
sat in the sturdy white chapel upon the hill.
Standing plain before two empty boxes,
the deacon spoke of Jesus' feet across the water
and how the savior soundly slept through rough waves
and, woken by the frightened crew, arose
to calm the sea with his voice and with his hand.
When the service was done the little boy left alone
and walked up the hill to the grassy bluffs overlooking the placid seas
Not a ripple suggested a wave
Not a shimmer betrayed treachery
The boy stood at the edge and yelled out
I do not forgive you!
I do not forgive you!
The sea remained.
But his little hand shook with the thrill

25 July 2018

Postcard 134

There will be many nights of broken glass.
Its time to lace up high our heavy boots
Light will crystal-scatter underfoot
and it will cut. Cinch tight cinch tight
Is it true still that truth redeems?
In twilight, that will be hard to see.
Even blind, its time to step out firm and sure
The light doesn't fail. It's only dispersed.
Obscured. There will be ashes in the air.
Each day will taste the same, more bitter than the one before
Its time to spit out into dark, and step to where it lands
We may cry, but never mind the salty trails on grubby face
Our path is crystal clear
Its time to lace up boots. Its time to tug on gloves
Its time to step out into it and cinch up weary eyes
to grasp tight friendly hands
Twilight twilight of the night. Twilight of the dawn.
Its time to put rough clothes on. Its time top lace up tight
Civil twilight is so different than at sea
Only brightest start can guide in half-light
Its time to search in gloom to scan for what cannot be obscured
There will be many nights of broken glass to be endured
we see by scattered light. Pull on. wrap up, cinch tight and grasp
Walk out to the angry red. Is it night?
Spit bitter back. Is it night?

06 July 2018

Postcard 133

What I am doing, no one else can do. Bend a few ears. What I am doing is mechanical -- a camera's lens. Catch, in every aperture, the sprightly resonance, always always at the corners - the sprightly resonance of love. What I am doing, no one else can do. Wide angle love is the constant joke of a universe in bloom. Recall -- it's all mechanical. What I do, no one else can do. I am the focal point of every parallel wave. Telephoto love is the I see you. Yes you. What you are doing, no one else can do. Close cropped, fine focused, rule of thirds. Allow. Allow the linear features to flow from section to section. What I do, no one else can do. Fish eye, fish eye -- peering out and through, bending a few ears, bending  light. Love of sky, wide and bent -- a hemisphere. No one can do what we do, but try. Chase and capture the corners, the sprightly resonance. What I do, no one else can do.

29 June 2018

Postcard 132








































No glass on this beach washed flat. Only sand.
And no fires (see above). Only sand -- a broad gleaming tablet, gold and blank.
My bare feet are cipher markers. My new stick marks lines.
From above my cipher says I walk upright, I'm curious.
My line says I lean a bit to one side.
I strike out an image much larger than me with stick lines scrawled sharp and deep.
My vision, too, has a bit of lean.
My image I can apprehend, but only from one side at a time.
Who can see my lines are straight? My shapes are true? And of course, the tide returns.
The waves step broad and light, strike shallow mark as clear and flat as glass.
What did I say, what did I say?
My darling, I have etched upon you some of my memory
-- some scratched light, some punched deep. A good apprehension of me, sidelong.
And the waves slip back under themselves, then the waves slip in.
And my darling, I have etched upon me some of you, memories from just this side.
All in all we are together overlapping scrawls of wave washed memory.
Oh my darling hold on to me. Oh my darling lost like glass.
From where you are, can you apprehend I am slipping out to sea.
The cipher of my footfall, wave-washed, points to sea.

21 June 2018

Postcard 131

Use this, use this. Where is the right tool? Anything! The sharpest blade grows fastest dull. Useless. Understanding, careful caught, dried to knowing -- sand in hand. Use this, use this. Every problem has a hammer, right? Beat together to fall apart. Every hammer needs a handle. Beat apart to glass. Use this, use this. Glass blown. Glass glows. Glass grows like hair. Brittle words. Brittle words like fragile birds in air. Use this. Use this. What carries light and sound? Light of load and sound of structure. Scratch line with white hot nail -- pain-etched scratch-raised light and pale. Scars, stitch-bound and suture-tought. Use this use this. Every wound is lesson learned. Every hammer needs a nail. Every pane is pockmarked. Every hand holds fingers. Every finger holds its nail. Every hand is hammer-ready. Every word is frail. Use this. Use this. Lessons shatter out like veins. Every scar is pain once taught. Every word was once a flutter of desire contained. Every shard of glass was once a million grains of sand. Every hammer blow was swing of arm. Use this use this. Where is the right and proper tool? Every tool was once blood carved sharp and bright, the truest, light and sound. Useless. Useless.

30 May 2018

Postcard 129




































New clay
too tired
finger work
knead Touch
tips round
belly sand
brown Wireless
stretch sag
fitted Slouch
in fresh
sex over
stove clatter
Steep beans
cherry seeds
carraway
Outside in
seeps Street
neighbors
play, low
violence
Snap scrap
radio
Back fat
grease shatter
Awake Awake
Hot damn
cough clear
Walls sway
shoulder settle
ceiling beam
Pull toes
reach dust
curl grit
hair grease
Glass grime
sun streak
Leg leg
iron smell
damp scruff
little self
Hold clay
mold  Seed
spent Seed
clear empty
clean frail
exhale
Long lean
grim bulb
dull Lean
limb hung-ry
Skid dream
ash can
Bittler breath
settle settle
Dark self
smear glass
clear eye
see self
True eyes
true Squint
square blue
Eye teeth
crooked true
Full tongue
soft cheek
roll Full full
pinch shut
Pants snap
boot black
Eggshell
Eggshell
Doorway Grip
thready hat
Grime sweat
Honest work
Stay stay
look back
Porcelain
look back
Sheet bunch
look back
Stay stay
Full belly
woman hip
sway Door
way latch
foot fall
Man man
sand brown
beard face
clay tired
Clay

24 May 2018

Postcard 128

The bridge was modern and elegant. Pure white. A lesson in synthesis of fragile lesser parts. Of ghostly strength from synthesis. It arched over a green valley holding an ocean tributary. People came to look down from the bridge, to look up at the bridge, to play in the clean waters under its gossamer shadows. For a time, a pod of whales came to the bridge, rolling lazily in the sun, playing slowly and powerfully in the shallow waters. This brought more people, drawn by their strength so delicately shared. One day, a whale somehow got one of its long pectoral fins tangled in the lattice footworks of the bridge. Neither the whale nor the people panicked at first. It was a novel situation, surely as easily exited as entered. But that was not the case. The whale began to act as one does when inexorably stuck, frantic and panicking, writhing and wounding itself in the struggle. The people perceived that at that particular footing, the tide would withdraw leaving the whale beached on a sandbar. Groups began to organize around various intentions. The other whales had returned to deeper waters, though they too seemed distraught. Whatever intentions there were, were not allowed to materialize. It its struggle, the whale had turned itself over and soon the fight for freedom ceased. There were no people on that dark night when the tide lifted the drowned whale without effort and easily removed its slack fin from the bridge footing, and carried the whale away.