David Chorlton - 2
Morning Encounter ☊All doors are locked right now.
Nobody’s home on the street where every house stands neatly in place, with flowers and a wind chime hanging by the door. Although the mats say Welcome, no one is here for hospitality. The sun streams into unoccupied living rooms whose only sound is of time ticking its way across a carpet. It’s a fine day to be walking without a destination, just to feel each step as it falls and looking up at the mountain baked into the atmosphere; to be a sentence beyond interpretation in a book of desert hours while a lawn sprinkler whispers to dry heat, when a coyote melts out of the light and flows across the sidewalk after picking up a scent that runs from his nose through each of his bones to the last hair on his tail. Lightning FlashesBy the fencepost where a path long dry
meets the road, a coachwhip hung on the talons with which a Red-tailed hawk had pulled it from the grass, holding to stormlight with wings spread wide as the snake writhed free and slid down against the sky. ~ At summer’s easy latitude a stream across a meadow ran bright and quickly when the dipper left its rock to dive beneath the surface and returned to air the color of a storm. ~ The heaviest clouds were sinking between two peaks and the grasslands fell silent. All that moved were the moth’s black wings as it flew at the speed of a shadow escaping the object that cast it. ~ Red earth slid beneath water that flashed directly from the sky and ran across the desert. A lily floated at the center of a pond surrounded by Spadefoot toads. ~ The midnight broadcast from the border lit up the radio beside a slightly opened window whose curtains leapt away from the wall as a sheet metal wind rattled the sky. ~ The black half of the sky collapsed into a canyon. Ensuing rain washed away the trails that wound through the forest whose tallest trees rose to meet the lightning. ~ It was impossible to see from among the pines and oaks the advent of a storm above the canyon and the trail reached an end where sheets of light blanched the seconds as time and water ran into the mouth of a long abandoned mine to disappear behind the columbines. ~ A single bolt above the bajada illuminated the canyon all the way from where the oaks begin, past the smooth rocks and the grasses woven between them, the sycamores along the stream coming down from the saddle, and for seconds even the bats flowing faster than water turned white inside an echo. ~ Warm thunder rolled along the ridge behind the orchard in a high clearing whose trees were painted white and vanished for a second when a sudden flash seared the boughs with a hundred years of moonlight compressed inside. |
The BeginningThe day’s first wheel begins to turn.
An officer on patrol lifts the hem of darkness with his nightstick. A needle slips into the groove and silence clears its throat. The key tries every lock until one gives. The cogs leave bite marks as they engage in the machinery’s deepest regions and cry out for oil. A man condemned is waiting to hear news of his appeal. The first violinist is wide awake now and still trying to tune a broken string. The Elegant TrogonI
If a group of four stands on the bridge each one looking in a different direction and listening for a call they’ve never heard before, they have come a long way to see the belly flash between dark trees above which the canyon walls are pulling free of the ground. II At the dry end of spring when scarcely a breeze disturbs the leaves on the sycamores the calls are answered from across a slow creek: two hoarse notes from this side and two from over there, always nearer than they sound when flying makes no sound at all. III If there’s poison ivy by the trail and a woodpecker drumming from off in the pines; if the water runs shallow and junipers filter sunlight at noon; if the sky is dizzy with hawks circling and the only road is gravel and thirst, chances are good that the trogon is so close that nobody thought to look where he is resting. IV The name changed by mysterious decree from Coppery-tailed to Elegant, while the red feathers remained as bright as those the Aztecs saw. OkayTwo men cast a single shadow
at noon on Fifteenth Avenue. They could be balancing at oblivion’s edge; the younger struggling to support his friend as they slow dance to the sound the traffic makes, passing the waste lot where at first they appear to be fighting but anyone close can see the effort one makes to keep the other on his feet, raising him by the arms before he lets them go and stands back while the other stumbles forward with his legs growing shorter at each of the five steps he attempts before he is on his knees and unable to stop his face from touching down between dead grass and stones. He rolls to one side, revealing his eyes which roll as he is lifted again and stands with his palms open to receive the blessing of the sky before his knees give way and it changes place with the ground, the bus stop circles his head, the double yellow lines peel away from the middle of the road and wind around the sun as it tumbles to the pavement. No one on the street appears concerned. I approach the men, venturing a question as to the fallen one’s wellbeing and offering to call Emergency. The upright one takes a deep breath before the next lift, his strength clearly challenged, but his patience intact. He’ll be fine, he says, hauling the weight with one arm now around his shoulder as a labourer might carry a gunny sack. He’s okay. ♢ |