ON EXISTENCE

To feel and experience the past, present, and future in every second of every day, all at once... To slay time itself with an iron sword and lay the sword down in the moss by bare feet: a moss that will never cover the blade itself because it would take time to do that. And were has time gone? It is slain. It never was. It bleeds. And yet it always was; and always it will abide. I'm dreaming, these days, of vines and ferns, and wet soil that smells that way it tends to... Soil rich with worms and insects and whispering its secret to those who roam on it: Below it, deep below it, there is fresh water. I'm dreaming of loud birds breaking precious-yet-soon-forgotten silence with the beat of double-wings. Frightened animals running for cover and then forgetting that they are afraid and stopping to drink from a brook. Taking a second. Gazing off into the middle of space just to make room for a thought or a song. Dreaming of a hunger, and a thirst, and a silence and a calmness. Animals attacking other animals. Animals attacking men. Men fleeing and forgetting they are afraid and then stopping; making art and making poems and making love. Mud huts and raw sweat and fluid words and fluid tongues. The gritty, and the earthen, and the bark-laden, and the sorts of souls who look much like gnarled trees when standing, silhouetted, in a darkened forest of oaks.