On the night before, I slept very little to ensure I’d sleep the next night. That next night held a flight–an entire night mixed up with invisible hands batting our poor vessel about the sky.
Piano sound carries itself
winking uponaround three flights of interwoven logs:
Trees petrified in
preservation of paint and
stoic service.
It floats into round-edged crevices,
fitting log upon, in log.
By morning I’d managed to clock, at most, two hours of catnaps. Crossing over an arc of land, through turbulence that mimicked some other arc of land (as though clouds mold themselves into, on such topology). I’d been packaged and unpacked in regular patterns.
Wooden beams cross more than the ceiling across ceiling and walls and floors.
We all walked through the same long glass hallway and felt the sharp bite of cold between plane and hall. Came to some curves and went down stairs. I know the place was marked well or I wouldn’t have found my way.
Logs interconnect. Stacked and crossed, angling into the ceiling. Through gaps in wooden railings: seeing Couples play cards, chess, other games, laughing sometimes.
I think they might’ve needed a passport though. Pass port. A flight as port? Port to something. The customs room maybe. Was this a customs room, human port?
Families sit, children exploring a hexagonal circumference of fireplace, roars, placidly. They re-meet at intervals. Toward the ceiling, heat climbs in lax pursuit of piano notes.
This flesh and blood foreshadow–a special trick, and I started to guess about, and my limited memory of spoken French. It was my turn to pretend I’d woken from a full night’s sleep.
A man sits on a striped chair, (red shirt rumpled in relaxation). He'd have grand children. His white-haired wife walks to the chair by his side and sits. The two gesture to each other before opening books-- dice tumble. Hockey sticks, skis, people pass through.
Quiet corners lack people. Sitting with a dim lamp to my left, It yellows the green marble table and reflects my white coffee cup. Nice white–best showing of coffee bean brown, barely separable from enfolding beams of wood–note.
Observing is outside time though the reflection of woods cradles all of us before passage.
This style suits you to a T. Narrative bleeding into poetry bruising into prose all bandaged up by a perspective. Lovely photo, by the way.
H’m… thought I responded earlier. Thanks. I’m still a bit tempted to play with the format but will probably leave it. I think I realized why I’m not sure about the blend of narrative/poetry. A friend once criticized that in someone’s work saying the two should simply never mix. I remember that, thinking why not? I still can’t figure out why but he was so insistent it stuck with me.
Every time I read it, it opens-up a new window and new details come to play.