THIS CRUD ONCE MORE
Three in the morning and there's not a light on
anywhere except right here, and I'm drinking this
crud again expecting it to keep me up : a dark brown
diffusion of coffee some six hours old. I don't really
want it, but outside of living there's nothing else.
-
When I lived in deep country, this time of night, I'd
hear mysterious sounds - some form of croaking or
a warble, bunches of geese on their post-midnight way
(why they'd fly so, at night, I never knew), the goon of
a loon, sometimes, making that laughing horror.
-
Here, by contrast, what noises there are in the dead of
night are different : besides the trucks and nervous clanking,
there are sounds of steel and sounds of movement, the running
noise of that idiot's Yamaha or Suzuki - its late-darkness wail
and screech, a combination both of terror and speed combined.
He comes home, and enters, always, way too late for sense.
-
Ghosts and shadows, maybe, they too rest. The dead folk I
remember, they are sitting with me but nothing passes between
us. You know those fey religious types, the ones who claim the
ghost of God on every child's chin and the shibboleth of prayer
proclaiming a gracious way in, well, they'd have their say about
this I'm sure. I sit with a devil of my own conjuring.
-
There's nothing longer than a midnight lawn, and now that it's
three AM, the lawn's just longer. My own dog's noises keep me
mental company as she rolls about and loses space in what can
seem only the deepest sleep I've ever witnessed. The front door
hangs ajar - some sound of wind or at least the passage of air
rustles the countless leaves. Curt and succinct, like a parson's
snideful oath; I hear it even if I try to ignore the sound.
-
I've not come far, in fact I've hardly moved and now find - just
as well - myself along in many respects right where I began.
Solid as a lunkhead, lost again in the form of thought that
only causes trouble. No, please, not all this crud again.
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