Useful Fiction: Continuation
All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Go slow, wander, read, write, listen
and remember: time no longer
separates—the present surrounds,
envelopes us, erases all
hours’ distinction. In time—the most
in time—just an outline of sand,
time and nature synonymous,
creating this useful fiction—
a truth without limit, present
bounded only by the words we
use to make the impossible.
I take you with me, live informed
by history ever-changing,
lasting along, stretching between
us, thread and strands—broken lines of
eight connecting our presence. Then
and now I hear intrusions, these
other presents, histories on
the margin of our own, impinge,
act out their will—lay open palms—
pass the body’s permeable
surface, bleeding into soil, a
harvest of lives and what we are.
Out the open window—morning
glory flowers. . . We drove as far,
as long we could—the sun went down
and the moon came up and out of
Idaho—a big purple orb
rising across the night sky—a
morning star—kept us all the way.
Wyoming by night—Nebraska.
Trains rumble in the distance with
low grumblings, lights cutting dark, the
dissonant horns blasting distance—
a broad margin in the present
stretching beyond the limits of
sublunar sight. A document
of time, we make this fiction to
live within, the present a gift
for hereafter, these few days left
to fill with words, and counting what
remains finite—to disappear,
grow old, wither and die, become
an element of earth again.
Still, the current speeds us along. . .
After a dark wintering night
dawning nature—our eyes transmit
spectacles of this universe,
as night veils and the day reveals.
Our history becomes its own
spectacle, part of nature, the dark
made light, and in its glorious
creation now. These our gifts—the
moments gathered here within and
freely bestowed, these instants add
up to eternity. Little
figures of time—dust and chaff yet
add them, and then multiply, by two,
or collate them, interspersing,
even quoting them, a kind of
remembering that adds layers
and generates its own living
environment, an atmosphere
capable of sustaining life,
enveloping us within a
sublime landscape, with seasons hot,
wet, warm and cold. Heaven is just
under our feet, when we dare look.
This our living document, this
useful fiction, mends rifts—fissures
of stress and force—contains time, a
present gift, and comforts hardship.
We make it as it makes us, too,
even on the hardest of days.
Even daily, miracles may
form faith—simple gestures, seeing
made new, revelations,
living with a broad margin at
the cusp of some speculative
endeavor and understanding
you will never fully know why,
yet still beat on. Each word shall be
continuous, without border,
beginning or end, all part of
the living whole, an unbroken
stream of time made just and right for
you, all those who may come after.
I speak only to you, and those
willing to listen—attentive—
to trains roll through the night, watch birds
dash and soar, cringe as lightening
cracks, gaze as she dresses early
in morning light. You give life its
potential—to breathe, stretch in the
sun, lay in the tall grass, nothing
less than a free soul set loose from
its bounds to change the world and all
within and out. We might tend a
smaller margin, read less, drive more
but we desire living art, a
useful fiction that ebbs and flows
like moods, seasons moving along
in time, with time, as time, living
promise of what is yet to come.
