Black sticks

SOC writing _ 24.6.21

Black Sticks

Burnt black, burnt till they had spent every last piece of carbon – theirs to do – to burn, to be left with nothing – sharded and waiting – now for the rain – to wash them into some nutrient flow where they may be of service to new life. New life is what I’m always looking for - beckoning around this corner and that. Found sometimes – but its always there – the world was not enough for him – for his voracious hole that needed filling – like hers – the only fill comes from inside – the world unto itself must heal and tend to exactly the way the wound be. Then – then its all over and we go our merry ways separated by a thousand miles of ocean and tears well spent – time an effort and love and money and… what else is worth doing? Nothing. The nothing has come upon me and left me undone to the greatest degree I have ever imagined – imaging the sea gull flying wing tipped across the outgoing tide inches above the water – how? How do they do that – fly so close to the surface without being ever upset or alight in a way unfit for a bird? I fly too – out on this new day – dawn wet and I have collected my alms – been given by the people - as I hold silently my bowel silently in my mantra – the days all receding into the one - the concertina of time slowing me down so that I really pay attention to what is here – really, really pay close attention to the black bird, the robin, the pied oyster catcher young squawking on the sand as if to say – its unfair – you going off and leaving us here without food – just my imagination – but perhaps that’s my victim speak on the days when I want mother to hold me – bolder still I stand on my own feet – two wet hands in the sand – a deferent bow three times to the portent uprising coming from my place of night vigil with acid – the place I set out from again now.