Good, Grief

The doors unlocked, just in case. A second pack of cigarettes, just in case. Open arms, just in case. He drinks his coffee slow yet quicker than he lives. Every tick of a clock is a rupture in the spinning of his own sun. Another year around the thought. He dresses to impress any witness every morning, waiting for the ring of a doorbell, a knock. He felt red corduroy and a flannel was tacky. Black jeans, boots, keep it simple. There is a ridge at the edge of his world, that looks over another. He walks to it and studies it. He looks over and prays for a sight of eagles or goldfish dancing in a crystal blue pond and children beat drums with enthusiasm. There is a cloud, thick as dirt, filling over the edge, blocking his view. There are holes, with just enough to see, that sunlight is making its way around. That his sun didn’t carry over. He remembered that the sunlight had a name. He is 78 and believes in the end as merciful the longer he breathes. The wind scathes by his imagination and his mind twirls on living and reliving endlessly and its beginning to fill the cracks in the walls with mold. He is frail and heavy and docile as he is mean. I suppose he governs the feeling of the day. His little house on the burning hill, directly under the heat of the sun, exactly where water avoids, right where wolves go to die in a blaze of silence. This is where he lives best and he governs that too. There is a weight in the air. Something unborn and mysterious and speaking to him fruitfully from brighter dreams and she has a name and he forgets it from time to time, unravelling his feelings on the subject and the feelings of the subject rather than the subject itself. There is no witness to his madness. His chosen solemnity. His grieving of proper dignity. He stares straight at himself, and develops other faces over himself. He is his own witness. He plays no instruments yet knows every note. He laughs at himself when he wakes up from nightmares. He gathers memory in a sifting pan and lets the rot roll through.