Red,
A song for you by firelight sings:
Syllables tumble down the mountain like time does, Red, an egg. We don’t know what to do with it. We’ve sat crosslegged in the Teahouse for eleven days now, searching in. A false stylite fasting, man, incubating nothing, just massaging the ancient mantra:
Wet the white knuckle.
Do you remember your parable, Red? So young, Montana we think? About the figure storming the jailhouse wall just to find distance from a lover. Hard labor pushing rock as relief from the heartbreak.
We rewrite it, share it with our brother by source of candlelight.
Wax falling like tears to the table. Wax shaping into moments, like ice. Socket black levee in the window,
And at midnight the lake is a still raven. Yellow eye, bonelike silver ripple, we climb down to see it in secret. Fog abstracts the figures on the water, misshapes them, these flowers.
We claw at it, listen to the cries of the midnight fishermen, climb back up.
Hunger has always had its function, Red. Wounds too. And even without a husk we twirl, we sing.
All we need’s a little wind to stoke us along.
Dyl