The Unafraid
The day can't fool the season. It is hot and the occupied and unobservant go on pretending that it's summer in October just like they pretend that they will live youthfully past 100.
The night is a fortune teller wearing winter as perfume. She is asking you to sniff the scent of her bony, old hands.
To the unafraid this is nostalgia. All that cold darkness they have lived through, without television, without flying south.
The hibernative holing-up in order to measure the year by its losses.
They are careful knowing there is only a few pieces left of the twelve piece pie. They know also that Time is a prolific baker.
For the unafraid the cravings begin:
Acoustic nylon guitar strings
Songs in the minor key
An old pepper-minted tea
And also, a freeze that reminds you of bones (the same bones that will one day host a buffet for a clan of grave-robbing maggots), white and shiny.
The unafraid are two-faced hedonists who welcome tragedy and gain in equal measure. The truly unafraid see little difference. The day and the night are two masks the earth wears trying to impress both sun and moon. But earth is earth and life is life, regardless of which tragedies or gains revolve around it.
The unafraid are the prairie trying to break the plough.
The unafraid will light a fire and sing midnight duets as they play on that minor key.
The night is a fortune teller wearing winter as perfume. She is asking you to sniff the scent of her bony, old hands.
To the unafraid this is nostalgia. All that cold darkness they have lived through, without television, without flying south.
The hibernative holing-up in order to measure the year by its losses.
They are careful knowing there is only a few pieces left of the twelve piece pie. They know also that Time is a prolific baker.
For the unafraid the cravings begin:
Acoustic nylon guitar strings
Songs in the minor key
An old pepper-minted tea
And also, a freeze that reminds you of bones (the same bones that will one day host a buffet for a clan of grave-robbing maggots), white and shiny.
The unafraid are two-faced hedonists who welcome tragedy and gain in equal measure. The truly unafraid see little difference. The day and the night are two masks the earth wears trying to impress both sun and moon. But earth is earth and life is life, regardless of which tragedies or gains revolve around it.
The unafraid are the prairie trying to break the plough.
The unafraid will light a fire and sing midnight duets as they play on that minor key.
posted by cjb at 1:45 AM
2 Comments:
beautiful, chris
nice words. and needed.
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