WIND SCRIPT/EMPTY HEAD
you didn’t notice me much until recently, your senses blind, stuffed and plugged and unheeded, but I’ve been here, there the whole time, flitting around and passing through, you catch snatches and glimpses sometimes, but it takes you hours out of the way to track my movements and motions, commotions, and even then you lose me now and again, in the nod of a stranger on the path, on the tires of the car grinding past, only to find me again as we cling to the bottom of your Vibram soles and ride the song of the finch that catches your eye in the gorse, and lose me as you see the house come over the horizon, your senses cloud, you must just be lusting for water and food, your stomach and squeezing out your nostrils and eyes and ears and your load comes off your shoulders and you sigh, drowning me out, your breath filling your head, you talk to yourself and think not of the rocks beneath your feet ageless and yet old, and yet not as old as they will be, while you are still so young and not as old as you will be, though they can’t tell the difference and neither can you, you think instead of people, others that you passed on the paths, thinking you desired solitude but not looking for me after all, though I sit right next to you, all around you, perched atop your head and filling the panes of frosted glass in the window, and scratching at the roof of your mouth, but you’re too distracted now, the door though closed lets in the rumor of voices, and then bangs open against the wall and two people fill the space, their intrusion sudden and bright in the aloneness that has been your short abode and your heart rises, you were not ready to be alone, not with us anyway quite yet after all, and they talk and you talk, filling every inch of the air with news and stories, introductions anecdotes, instructions and suggestions and advice and laughter, and you share food, and whisky, and cigarettes, and the buzz of drink and conversation fills the space around you even more fully than before and leaks out through the gaps in the rafters and the smoke from the pinewood fire you made like a searchlight penetrates the still bright sky though you’ve forgotten it in your engagements and excitements, and it isn’t until your stomach is full and your head is somewhat drained of desires and the buzz of the drink has subsided and left in its place a dull but not wholly unpleasant ache that you again hear me breathing, rustling through the branches and brushing up against the sides of the stone you lie in, carried by the blades of grass rubbing against it, you hear something, is it the couple from Germany outside fucking in their tent, or is it the stream in the cut in the grass carrying on its course as it has been doing for long before your father was a twinkle in your grandmother’s eye, no its just the mice scurrying, we run over your bags, the dirty boards that make the floor no longer just dirt, the benches that are too wide for one, well no, not too wide, who can complain about extra space, but not quite wide enough for two, although you wouldn’t complain if she was here next to you to press up against in the night, to turn towards and melt into, but the bench is empty and we tip toe across your fingers chase each other in circles flitting through the room, two, three, five shadows, quiet, as we recede into the blankness of your mind, the short lived night making the most of its few hours of regency, longing for the return of its dominion, but its only June and in this the time of bright long sunlight hours there is no place for that inky blackness, even the space between West and East only reaches a wash of gray, not even the depth of the instant coffee you acquire the taste of tomorrow morning, its tomorrow morning, already, its tomorrow morning and I still whistle through the grate in the stove, you forgot to close the door and all the heat has leaked out, and the flame is gone and the embers are dead, and I trace lightly over their imprints, but you arise and yawn and you have your own flame that bright blue fire that boils your water for the thing you pretend is coffee and porridge, and you stare bleary eyed at the can that spouts the hissing streams of magic, fire, life, and the couple comes in hungover and says goodbye, and you say goodbye and you all smile, forgetting the mice and not seeing me flitting between you all, but it is a good bye, it is good and it is goodbye, and you eat the porridge alone and float back to me until you feel the desire and you take the spade and trudge out to an open space and you crack me open a bit and peel me back and shit and cover it back up with the flap of grass that has grown for just that purpose, and now you set off one step at a time, at first distractedly, thinking about the way you have spent the last few hours and the significance of that in your plans and in the Grand Scheme of Things, but then you step in a puddle, and your whole foot is soaked, because waterproof boots don’t work if you submerge them, that rinses the big complicated thought exercises from your mind, and you fall slowly back into me and I catch you like a great big comforter spread taut to receive a body tumbling from a burning building, enveloping you as you make contact, tousling your hair, squelching between the toes of your left foot and eventually, after a misplaced step onto a tussock of sedge a few hours later, your right foot too, and for a while we dance like this in and out of each other, or rather we keep going as we always have and you oscillate between various points of recognition and consciousness, you don’t notice much do you,