View From Above
Derivation of Purposes.
The inertial me, a blot of dew hugging skin of earth, how great am I? I think I am nothing. Upheave the earth, then, and I am spirited downhill towards these jewels of power, gobbling into monstrous dimension. The voices that change me set me on different paths, I am sucked away into such thought spaces that sprout goals and ambitions, or fearful wishes at least. A blurry arc of transient splash becomes more than itself, greater than the outline of its midday shadow, not blot but bolt that is more than myself.
Raindrop accelerating and collecting, pooling gathering strength becoming bigger. There is some gravity between me and the drops sitting there patiently waiting to become absorbed, touched and transmuted, rolling into some greater watery snowball, enveloped into a single identity, mass of energy. What is the end? Does it speed off to indeterminate ends, the cliff or sill of life, nomenclature, acknowledgement? or will it come to rest, a standstill with no further hills to leap, sleek surfaces to skim?
Do I sit to evaporate, or is misting away the relentless myth of ethical proselytes? Will I tumble in a scream to a dead halt, or sizzle in my conservation? If I shrink, is it for naught? Tell me, how should this drop of drip move from here?
Little but I Noticed.
No rain now, just a light fog taking hold of the lights and dragging me along the dotted lines tracing a single vanishing point. A white car is following me, not too close for comfort. Surely the car is gendered. Is he following me? Or is she? Through these paths and beyond.
We cut a swath through the stillness of America. I think about shared frames of reference. In a vacuum I could toss something back to her, and she could catch it, wouldn’t zoom by her at close to the speed of sound. Something to throw … a magazine? Flutters even in a vacuum, no good. What else is easily accessible to me … straw dripping with lukewarm tap water from lunch? The cigarette lighter. Passing on the torch to a kindred flame. How our minds wander while our buckled bodies fly.
A yellow signal filters through the rising haze. She’s speeding up, fed up, leaving me in the dust outside the passing lane. Those minutes run off on spindly legs and hide under the kitchen sink, the very dusty spots you could reach but wouldn’t, don’t they? Nab them on the sprint while you’ve got nothing better to do, nobody to blame for that. She’s lifting off from our world, now my world as the rocket pulls level, large as life, then shrinks again red shifted. I dare not even suggest attachment. The speedometer holds steady, not a flicker.
Was she? Even a girl? Speculation on moot issues not barred from activities of the driven. But there is an empty space, a big hollow space that extends to where the lights touch darkness, maybe even further than that, the white car leaves me with. Were we even traversing the same plane? I feel like it could have gone straight through me, sentimental apparition, pushing ahead with conviction while I melt into the mists behind, behind, behind.
Plot Thinner.
Is it a happy ending if the happiness doesn’t last? Or if the happiness is delusional? Or if instead of exuberant joy it is contentment? Or distraction? Is a happy ending just the prologue of another sad ending?
Forgetfulness or masquerading repression swept thoughts from my mind before and after those weekly meetings, but her music was sweeter and I could not play it, I knew, between befores and afters. But somebody killed the adventurer and replaced him with a knower, that’s why I knew even though the knowing was full of awe for the unknown. And her, the dancing sprite flushed with inner knowledge of her own, the secrets which kept her powerful too, painted warmth into breath, a tinkling mystery.
How many notes have I been a miser to play?