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.

Waking to an Open Window

O! For the wide, white nights of the far North!

The warm breath of earth tinged with flowers

falling from the leaves that ousted them.

The ground white with Bradford’s pear blossoms,

reflecting nights that never truly dim to darkness.

 

And we lay on a carpet of clovers,

violet with the vibrancies of new life.

 

What is this world set on stone and soil,

fringed by cloud and outer oceans of vacuum?

If I were to feel the entire heartbeat

of the universe at large, would I

 

be less awed by that white heartbeat of yours,

beating violet in the clover beside me?