Ritual
It is here and upon me and I forgot about it. It seems like it was only a heartbeat before that the air turned to smoke at my lips. That the restless, angry things inside me began to twitch and stir like so many weevils under my skin. It is Autumn again and some primal, transient instinct is beginning to kick in.
I want to fly from here.
To feel the richness of the wet leaves in every action I take. To wash myself of this modern world with all its dry, crackling, electric sterility and return to the places where the rows of freshly plowed-under corn and cabbage stalks flow over the fields like an infinity of whitecaps in the morning frost.
That simplicity.
That dirt-under-the-fingernail easiness.
The warm throb of over-worked shoulder muscles.
I want to run until the crisp, apple-scented air is roaring in and out of my lungs like the billowing plume of a steam locomotive.
To change.
To grow.
To become.
And I will roar at the ancient Gods of harvest. I will make them know me by all my names.
I am man.
I am the future.
I am the past.
I will scream "I! Am! Still! Here!" and they will have to come forth and acknowledge me, because the seasons turn by my clock...not theirs. And then the last leaf will fall and the the howling thing will grow tired and look around perplexed and then it will sleep.
And another heartbeat will pass.
I want to fly from here.
To feel the richness of the wet leaves in every action I take. To wash myself of this modern world with all its dry, crackling, electric sterility and return to the places where the rows of freshly plowed-under corn and cabbage stalks flow over the fields like an infinity of whitecaps in the morning frost.
That simplicity.
That dirt-under-the-fingernail easiness.
The warm throb of over-worked shoulder muscles.
I want to run until the crisp, apple-scented air is roaring in and out of my lungs like the billowing plume of a steam locomotive.
To change.
To grow.
To become.
And I will roar at the ancient Gods of harvest. I will make them know me by all my names.
I am man.
I am the future.
I am the past.
I will scream "I! Am! Still! Here!" and they will have to come forth and acknowledge me, because the seasons turn by my clock...not theirs. And then the last leaf will fall and the the howling thing will grow tired and look around perplexed and then it will sleep.
And another heartbeat will pass.
If you've never read Tess of the D'Urbervilles (though many Hardy books are good for it) - there is a perfectly detailed picture of harvest etched in my head by his words.
But since it wouldnt be a most-quoted part - how about this - from one wonderland-hater to another?
"To light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light."
@pc: Wow. That makes my writing sound like it was done by the guy who wrote "Earnest Goes to Camp".
Eggs Eroneous! Bwahahahahaha!
(I'm not going to be able to make any sense now.)~IC
@IC: How many times do I have to tell you? It goes Breakfast THEN Bourbon. It's the most important meal of the day! Absorbs the alcohol!
Hardy is a master. Who are we but minions, cowering in grayish shadow of HDTV and todays top 40, never realizing how far our world has strayed from the art of words or the beauty of moment in the sunshine.
And he makes me feel like I walk blindly through beauty and write about as well as the folks that gave us Mork and Mindy.
Beautiful.
Makes me miss childhood.
Beautiful write. :)
@jk cookie: Me too.
@GSG: Thanks.
what he said, but the girly version of it - I want to sit by the trees and stir sticks in the embers of a long forgotten fire, drink in the harvest moon and dance a drunken dance bathed in stars.
Beautiful.
thank you
You sir, are a genuine poet. It must be instinct I feel it kicking in with the changing wind here also.
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