wayfaringstranger.mp3 3.3 Mb

I found the edge of the world

 yesterday, and the gears are frozen.  The great vaulted doors which keep in from out, and that hold back the sudden rush of time from catapulting over itself, have chinks, and there is nobody there to tighten the screws.

The last owner and operator seemed to be a childish packrat, tossing his toys about with careless abandon before a hasty departure.  

Some early prototypes lie in dusty neglect, the molds' cracked and the concepts' shelved.

We drew crazy circles in the dirt with our toes, on that rope swing years and years ago, and bent to better hear the melody fluting out of anthills.  

Now, my friends, behold the dust

of Ferric Oxide, known as rust.

Which some might mistake as a sea-going tram car.  Oh, Easy for Leonardo!

I knew a girl once who loved telephone lines and the towers that held them up.  Not poles, but those skeletal, ribcaged iron spiders that march in line through cornfields and into the haze.  I hadn't thought of her in years; we weren't best of friends, but I silently and thankfully appreciated her, and straight lines into a distance is a gift that I would give her, if I had her here.

And in the last orange flaring burn before equalizing night, colors double themselves in effort to remain relevant.  We all polish a bit harder when faced with our own redundancy.

Go not a-roving, the old one is saying, and think of thrift.