Leon Petty
Ether
Life is always new although at some point
anyone truly old is weary of the surprises
I remember the first time I got stung by fire ants
One of the many days I forfeited man’s divine sovereignty
knuckling instead down to humanity’s common servitude
to the fears and pains that sleep coiled
rapacious in sinister dens of time
pain like the day I ran through the soft gray ash of a bonfire
gathering its hot, quiet embers to dance inside my shoes
pain like the brooding of frozen fingers
recovering from the blue needles of snow
the celebration of pain with oval and hourglass scabs
swarming on my knees and elbows
and King Pain, the feelings of loneliness
carving away at the apple of my soul
bitter little bits of emotion and sensation
censored from the peeled psyche
and with every hurt comes another mystery to solve
The enigmatic life, the discovered story
sans any epilogue
just a story to tell backwards
almost backwards
almost but not quite
to the what, the who, the why
a story shattered by everything
it was ever connected to
and sometimes you get to watch where you are going
as someone or something dies
and in watching them die
you see the saddest thing of all
that life is like a centipede
with a hundred jogging legs moving athwart on the horizon
and if they stop there is no mystery
There never was any mystery at all
There was hurt and hunger and relief
and all the answers gliding like hawks on the ascending ether
in enormous gray circles
that have no beginning or end