The
mimeograph waxes mournful in the trembling heat haze, while vacillating
counterparts quiver around the inmost cycle of solitude. The lunar phase mirrors
the waning positionality of the onlooker, half illuminated, her gibbous face grimaces
from the consequences of the bet. Seven counts, counting to seven, an event
only becomes evident at the strike of seven. First as tragedy, then as farce,
and then solely as semblance; following a number of notes sounding the
impossibility of the set. The pathfinder moves through the dry landscape as a
mountain, gravel rippling from each inaudible spin around the axis, like a
pebble ripping open a pond in a restful rock garden, with no one present to
witness the crash, bar perhaps the long-deserted assailant. Ahead lies the land
of ruins, and the low-hanging blue clouds pour earthward, the tempered
cylindrical phantoms fleeing into the underbelly of the cool lava, through
circular mouths of the stone, speckled at regular intervals along each side of
the road. Somewhere the ether must conspire with its foundation and link the
contained body with the infinity of Above. Armed only with impulse, the rest
swathing indeterminably in the dark, and intuition burning faintly, like
earthshine glimpsed from outside the window of a candle-lit alcove, or a star
imploding at an unfathomable distance; intuition’s dying twin, the bond
measured with the breadth of light, which though always arrives at its end paralleled
in the rhythmical decline that marks the lifespan of an individual soul, like
the mirrored humming of murmuring wings suspended against the fading sky. A steadily
unfolding parallax without a viewer. Crossing wagging bridges moonward, paths unfolding
along forked gardens, plateaus strewn with rubble and glass from broken
bottles, she arrives finally, the body swimming in palsy, at the gate named Beginning, as if finally uncovering the
purpose of the last letter of an ancient alphabet, as if standing at the mouth
of a cave, bowing to sunlight for the first time in seven days. Men have stood
here before, entering aguishly into diatribes against the vehemently forceful
rays. Now, here she stands still, momentarily, before carefully picking up a
rock with both hands and, with even more care, lays it between her feet.
The very first stone that will soon rise as a cairn.
