A darkening horizon at midday,
swelling thunderheads, a green tinge, and muffled light.
A question blown like sand over a cliff.
An equilibrium turning inside out.
A suspicion of trains, coal, and rust.
A nail, old, once surrounded by skin,
encompassed by pulsing blood and heat,
alive in the minds of men, an artifact of purpose,
now pitted and worn, clinging to creosote,  earth, and wood.
A decaying uncertainty.

A man, miles away, brow knitted.
The crystallization of time.
An unconsciously squeezed fist.
The smell of ozone.
A distance measured in memories.

Two wooden doors atop a heart fly open.
A whoosh of air, a plume of dust,
and the sting of fresh oxygen.
The realization that everything matters.

The time for shelter, past.
A gentle breeze, tattered, scurrying for cover.

* * * * *

The engines of commerce slipping gears.
Polite sheets of paper that hollow out souls.
A heavy stock, bought in good times.
The great crack of a falling tree.
The hum and stench of the mill.
Windows, unwashed for a century,
sunk high in brick cliffs,
out of reach of the modern man.
A watermark visible only in sunlight.
The kitchen table vacant, but for this.
Two folds in the paper, an envelope, and a mass produced signature.
The ticking of a clock, slower than usual.
A question that cannot be answered.
A question too late to ask.

What is this place?

A splintered life.
Blame moot, like the atmosphere.
Countless epicenters of collapse.
Lives rung like bells.
Panic and silence and linoleum.
A swig of cold water.
A clot in time that won’t give way.

A door opens.  Closes.
Footsteps crunch on frosted gravel.
Bettlegeuse twinkles orange and red
across the vast container of space.
Messages from another eon.
The forging of atoms.
A Knowing.
The painful rustling of a heart.
The acceptance of the tiniest feeling.
A full, deep breath.
The softening of angles.
A baby beak. A cracked shell.
An emergence, a daring, and a desire.
A heart containing a new question.

* * * * *

Something Else.
A reality that is not real.
A Love that needs no reasons.
The discovery of Invulnerability.
The expression of what we are.

And Nothing Else.