Damascus

The sun has long since left the Gap; the road, pines, and ancient wrinkled houses are left together in a wind-tossed tumult of grey. Inside, the misting windshield. If a heart throbs behind these black windows, it’s muffled beneath the blanket of kudzu that the South has wrought about her, ever-mindful of winter. The only sound is that of the engine, working to demystify the windows and lead me through the Gap.

We are led to long days spent mere feet above a speeding highway, winding through the Carolinas, years ago; how the golden meadows between the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 26 inevitably turn to grey, then black, only illumined by oncoming headlights. The hum of another engine, and the popping of acorns as we pull into a driveway; Mom and Dad speak softly, so as not to wake us, the children. We pull the blanket tighter – a blanket of knowledge (or is it ignorance? How confused we are these days!) We look out over the world from an overpass, knowing all its workings; like a flea knows of the bonds and bounds of gravity.

How often do we long for that blanket now, however full of holes? Then at least could we face the night. Now, if not for heartbeats hidden in these houses, we would be lost in the blackening grey, wandering beneath the kudzu blanket.

Trance

She is the tune of a violin, exciting the air about her

like a stream pouring from hills crowned in mist –

slowly, quietly; a gentle presence like a lovely ghost.

 

She reverberates in the firelight with eyes like almonds.

Her gaze pours into me like Niagara into a cave

until the dam closes, she is gone, and I am awake.

 

She is a white moonlit gown hung on an open windowpane,

haunting me as silver rays filter through the lace.

Her shadow passes over the floorboards. I look; nothing.

 

My vision of her wavers like a meadow in autumn’s breath.

I can see the wind-waves in the bronze grass, but of her

I find only footprints and crystallized laughter in the soil.

 

She resonates the fibers binding my spirit to sinew,

like a cello played between the final second of a day,

and the first of the next. I watch the second hand,

 

entranced.

Sanctuary

I drove to the border of cloud and watched ghosts dance about its edge like waves on the sand. From here I can see the land bathed in thunderous sunlight; even from the shadows I can see that the world is filled with such beauty. There is a gossamer veil of mist, impermeable and unforgiving, that separates our world from theirs. Toeing the end of shadow, I can sometimes make out the holes in the sky where what lies behind pierces through – stars. I’ve tried to paint them, but white is hard to come by in this land between the highways.

(From the base of the clouds where the ghosts spy, we are probably only a contour cutting its way through mountainside and ocean shore, unalarmed and indiscriminating.) I asked the ghosts where white tones are found, and they indicated the cemetery. But, as I said, that veil is impenetrable; thus I stand in a meadow drenched in hues of grey so that the highway is indistinguishable from the patch of Queen Anne’s Lace to my right. I stand looking into a sun meant for a painter of white. I stand looking into a sun that whispers lines I don’t understand.