Sunlight

I sat beside the great window and ate stale popcorn. Thoughts of what must be done to provide filled my mind. Peering into the distance, lights on far off grey hills flashed like beacons. Beyond them nothing would resolve to my eyes. I will rest for a while in this place.

Overcast remained as background, yet warm sunlight revealed itself from heaven’s breaking grey firmament. The languid warmth of evaporation pervaded the air. Feisty birds sang with vigor for the first time. Water gleamed even in muddy potholes while wind gusts disturbed roadside trash. January mornings once brought frozen fingers and noses inside, aching red in the fireplace’s warmth. Another lifetime ago.

Clouds repeated their form in multitude, the sky holding numberless clustered courses of the same. Golden-haloed cotton on canvas, small and numerous, with variation visible in those nearby. Each day of mine takes the same shape also, no more than a dollop of shaving cream on the mirror.

Remember to smile and advance the clocks one hour to anticipate the daylight.

The death of winter is skin exposed to sunlight.

‘Do not worry yourself,’ I read. In her message she explained how my knuckles had turned white clutching the steering wheel. Wise, she knows my ways and how mundane I often find it all. Joan ground her teeth last night and I slept lightly. I found grace in psalms over coffee to steady myself. Her message is all my phone will display.

A roadside beggar works the crosswalk at an ugly box store. Graffiti strangely low on an exterior wall is completely unintelligible, suggesting a child’s hand. Orange humiliation and murderous greed show their cracks on every Main Street in the nation.

A wise old man who preached accelerationism once told me to lift with my chin and breathe slowly to manage burdens. He turned hermit years later and passed in the log cabins of Rocky Point.

Old timers there believed staying out of town was sound policy. No use in trying to understand anything, they said. Life’s peak experience was communion with God, something no one is able to behold in words.

I remember how he was quick to explain that none of it truly mattered. Our future is simple: what is won and what is forfeited on the fronts of sex, hunger, and bloodshed. All knowledge is an extension of nature’s vocation. Innocent monsters are we, ready with sharpened teeth, in heat and champing at the bit for life’s competition. Young eager dogs of conquest.

Those of my station help the empire or drop out to wander the interior with no safety nets. People are free to be grateful and proud for reasons that are impossible to demonstrate. I have no idea how the kids are going to make it; they must believe no one cares about them.

People who matter have money and we don’t know them. We suppose they live well and as humans. The rest are field mice, laying hens trapped in wire cages. We rest while in doubt, we have bags packed and ready, we always keep money on hand.

Soon the nights will be sultry and dangerous. Soon something will start that cannot be undone.

A people will sit beside the great window, gawking at the view.