garyhermes

[garyhermes]

On Becoming a Yellowblazer

I’m out on a walk along Black Road, the steady pace of cars and trucks on the highway to my left, scarcely noticeable. The warmth of the afternoon sun is penetrating, but tempered by a breeze, steadily pushing by. It’s out of the west, though it doesn’t really matter — the sea surrounds me.

I’m working on a problem. It’s one that’s left me vexed by the empty spaces, the gaps large and small, the breaks in the line on a map that interrupt like missing puzzle pieces. What name do I give this?

I don’t want to think about it anymore. It’s ended and yet the disjointed outcome remains tethered. I walk on. I wonder if I’m changed. I can’t say how.

I walk on, decluttering, decoloring. Maybe it’d be better expressed not in a single, simple hue but as an image on a page left as indelibly fissured and opaque as the days from where it was drawn.

I walk on and suddenly it’s just there and it’s releasing and I don’t need to close my eyes as I envision the simple scene playing out: a paintbrush, being placed in the glass on the windowsill.

[garyhermes]

Painted Surfaces

Endless sky above

Colors on the sea below

Things we cannot change

Deliberate steps

My companion, the white line

Forever on edge

Wrested to wild shore

Death by misadventure thronged

On bleak plastic waves

Jesus, is that you?

A rock glistened in the sun

No, it is not I

A chance encounter

Ripe vine-gathered blackberries

Scattered on ice cream

There, in the window

Remember the typewriter?

Once wondrous, you said

[garyhermes]

Railing on the Coastal Starlight

March 1, 0537: 35°, mostly cloudy

Departing Whidbey Island by car for King Street Station, Seattle

Lies by omission

Only clouds in the forecast, while it is rain, snow and fog we encounter

On things left behind

With a change-up on exit, my white cane is forgotten. This occurs to me an hour after it should have. Taking an offramp, the scramble to find a functional replacement is initiated. A search of Walgreens comes up empty, but Margie and Jenny find a set of hiking poles at the nearby Walmart, one of which will do

Now we’re back on the 5, which should bring some relief, but the side-trip burned through the remaining spare minutes, leaving a revised ETA of 0920, which also happens to be the recommended arrive-no-later-than boarding time

We make it curbside where Margie rushes me through check-in then guides me onto the train. We say goodbye. I stow my bag and take a seat

0950: Departing by Amtrak for Oxnard, California

The train-ride is pleasant overall; smooth, and quiet enough… except for that disturbingly-loud rattle emanating from the front right corner of the car. That and the intermittent giggly-girl-gaggle a row or two back. Each eruption a mimic of the one before it

1426: Pulling out of Portland, the girls are no longer present. The rattle disappeared sometime before they did

Smoking in the girls room

2125: All available staff are called to respond to an incident occurring in one of the lower level restrooms. There, the team locate and disrupt an individual on extended smoke-break. The offender is sternly put on notice — the only and final warning — subjecting her, upon subsequent offense, to be cast from the tribe at the train’s next scheduled stop

Wrestling a demon

It was Bigfoot who boarded this evening — just prior to the smoke-out — took the seat next to mine, went into a fitful slumber, disembarked before sunrise. In those nine intervening hours, the creature waged blatant and repeated attempts at annexing the sovereign territory of my mini-recliner, all the while grunting noises I found irreproducible, along with speech fragments, such as: Uh huh! Ultimately, the attempts were unsuccessful. Ground unrelinquished, but at great cost to the night’s sleep

Unruly Tooly

It’s sometime in the mid-afternoon and I’m drawn from a state become desensitized to the cycling of passengers and crew in and out of my world over the mounting list of stations strung along the route. Of the original Seattle manifested, I’m the only remaining constant in the mix

The train is approaching Paso Robles and where my attention has turned is to a discussion unfolding in the vicinity of the stairwell in front of me. All I pick up on is that it concerns removing one of us at the next destination. For whatever reason this is decided against

The stop is brief and uneventful and as we pull away that very same crew that gathered and conferred and decided minutes earlier may have found themselves in a place of regret but for the immediacy of the confrontation erupting between what appears to be a twenty-something impaired frat boy and said crew in that very same spot

To be continued

[garyhermes]

A Letter to My Captain

Leaving the start

                  I row

My resolve avowed, Captain

          And how I row

Wind, rocks and waves

    Catch, drive, release, recover

        From the far-off shore, beckons my lover

Chased by seven caged lions

                  I row

In the eternal desperation of the flight, Captain

          And how I row

Wind, rocks and waves

    Catch, drive, release, recover

        Avoid discover

Hunted by a lunatic

                  I row

Gripped by the frigid blanket of the night, Captain

          And how I row 

Wind, rocks and waves

    Catch, drive, release, recover

        Elude another

In pursuit of the ancient

                  I row

Once I held her in my sights, Captain

          And how I rowed

Wind, rocks and waves

    Catch, drive, release, recover

        I lost her in the tempest of the souther

Racing apparitions, doubts, conflictions

                  I row

This ship kept aright, Captain

          And how I row

Wind, rocks, and waves

    Aye, the catch, drive, release, recover

        Wherein the far reaches of self discovered

[garyhermes]

The Distance

In a slow radiant arc, the sun pierced the luster of the sky as if its surface was being rended open by an ancient alien welding tool, Hephaestus torching the atmosphere into halves. The woman bearing witness to the deconstructing of works fabricated in the eons before myth and metal were architected.

Quietly she travelled, pressing into the heat over a sepia landscape laid rich in arid desolation. An incandesced soil, plowed and nourished by the scorched leavings and anonymous remains of the hexed and the luckless. Her shadow falling slant, the nimbus encased manifestation like a corn maiden in votive prayer. The dark, chrysalid silhouette consecrating the ubiquitous, barren grail upon which she stepped.  

She passed through days where no beginning found no end, her world possessed by an algorithm proselytized of unceasing desert, hunger, thirst, struggle. She travelled through lands where Fata Morgana conjured fabled, monolithic ghosts of wind-eroded yardangs and taut pinnacles; conduits caught stretched and motionless between the dimensions. She lasted through nights that brought their own wonder and affliction. The woman knew the infinite beauty of canopy weighted upon canopy of stars, and she felt her insignificance in the immeasurable depth of loneliness that was all around her.

~~~

The woman spotted a small sandstone wedge jutted a few feet above the surface, at the edge of a gulch, and moved in its direction. The day was near gone. She arrived, let the sling bag slip from her shoulder and sat on the rock, facing the ranges far off to the west and north.

Bended to reach the valley floor, a slender virga was caught in the sunset's vermilion embrace and left blushing as a jealous heat fed on the steeped, hanging column. All the while the contemptuous wind swept away at its frayed streaks until not a sliver remained.

Two half-gallon stainless steel water bottles hung from the woman's other shoulder, one was empty, the other near half full. She twisted off a looped cap and slowly pulled a few swallows, leaving the last for the morning. She was hungry and thought of the small details still visible in the twilight. She rested the containers on the ground, removed a few items from her bag, then studied the nearby soil.

On her approach to the wedge, the woman observed traces of black-tailed jack tracks mingled intermittently with her path. She would find a run suitable to set a trap. Shortly, she located a stretch of a few feet in length where a break in the sandstone funneled her prey's tracks. There, using braided twine, she set a neck snare at the runway and then made her way back to the rock.

Darkness arrived. The woman crouched in the minuscule sanctuary of the lee, removed a worn, woolen poncho from the bag, wrapped herself in the small blanket, and curled onto her side in the soft, sandy earth. Laid down, she listened and watched as the night eased to life, delicately extricating her overcrowded thoughts. Stasis filled the void.

~~~

A muted snap broke the stillness of sleep. The woman felt herself hold her breath tight. Her chest thumped and she could feel the throbbing in her ears. Breathe deep, she thought, and inhaled. She listened, relieved in the quiet that followed. The struggle was brief and without a scream; a kill less likely to draw the attention of an opportunistic coyote.

The woman guessed the hare to be five or six pounds. She retrieved the non-slip line from its neck. At a section of stone that framed the run, she grasped the hind legs with one hand, bracing the jack against the flat surface. With the other, she inserted her hunting knife where the base of the skull met the neck, and with a quick motion dispensed of the head. Returned to her camp, she hung the carcass by its hindquarters to drain out off the rock's windward ledge. She then stepped away to a sandy patch of earth where she squatted and began to sift her hands through the loose, gritty soil.

~~~

As the last few hours of darkness crept west, she lied awake, mostly. Her mind occupied reconciling ideas and images of the recent. Of things built and worshipped, now silenced. Structures created, like gods, by the thought of man, but unlike man's gods, endured.

Out past the ruins of city sprawl and suburban tide, the corporates had made their presence known. It was a mechanized swell, where the remains of the thickly scattered sites of concrete and steel swarmed and draped the continent. The ciphers were told that this was their means to salvation; that matter extracted through the hosts' skin by the Grand Mosquitos plunging proboscises would nourish humankind. But it was an emasculating currency of material vectors: pathogens for which there were no ecological adaptations.

At the end, the shale gas wells lain abandoned to the wind and the rain and the grasses, spread about by the tens of thousands. Altars become extant monuments. Not that any of that mattered now, she thought.

~~~

She split the hide at its abdomen and pulled it away. A few loose hairs grazed her face as they floated by, glinting off the sun. The liver looked healthy. The rabbit's flesh cooked well on a branched juniper spit as sweet woodsmoke roused the woman's nostrils. She savored a small piece of the dried meat, gathered her things and walked on under a streaked sky born of a pale, desiccate dawn.

For the past two days the woman paralleled an unpaved road. She found her last water at a seep alongside the route, a few miles from where it spurred off a highway. Further on were two other springs that she worked to locate from her map. Each she meticulously glassed before making her approach. Neither presently revealed signs of life. Evidence of animals, two and four legged, trafficked the derelict camps, but the woman could not identify a water source in either. Now, nearly fifty miles in, she neared the road's end and its last marked opportunity to fill.

Some miles off, a single ochre arch topped a plateau. In its direction a pair of turkey vultures kited a thermal, circling tight, slow, graceful in the lift. The woman stopped to scan the horizon. At the foot of the raptors, flickers of reflected sun emitted under the light of a cloudless metallic sky. Vehicle remnants, she thought.

The woman drew in easy, patient to close the distance, stopping at times to watch. The camp was a ramshackle affair. Littered with splayed trailers, shanties, vehicles; sepulchral monuments of the generations travelled here before her's. Debris. Near the edge of the road rested a charcoaled 55-gallon drum, tipped on its side. A few shotgun casings were scattered here and there. Empty cans. A child's laceless shoe caused her to pause. Trembling shreds of entangled plastic bags rustled in the wind.

In a windshield that remained mostly intact but was smashed and folded-in and rested over part of its black vinyl dashboard, she saw herself. Where the glass was still attached at the passenger-side lower corner, stretched wide and made old by the spider-webbed pattern of the cracks. She found the image to be unrecognizable.

A search-over of the grounds turned up nothing of tangible value. Discombobulating clutter parceled in the silent trough of sporadic human grip, the camp. She imagined its assembly and disassembly and reassembly and abandonment ad infinitum. A vector to somewhere else. Whatever the vultures fed on, they were gone.

The spring was a short walk from the camp. The woman crouched and filled her belly and the bottles next. She did not return but walked on toward the end of the road. There the open rangeland abruptly shifted into one of sheer-sided canyons. The woman followed a drainage descending off the road and after a few minutes left the valley behind.

~~~

The warm salmon look of the slick, steep walls flanking the dry-wash stood in contradiction to the shaded, cool atmosphere of the narrows' depths. The air was still and quiet except for the slide and scrape of boots on sand and stone, of movement deliberate.

The terrain alternated between spaces wide and flat and those tight and twisted. The slots were, at frequent points, wedged with boulders followed by short, steep descents. The woman squeezed through the tighter spaces and downclimbed over the chockstones and dryfalls—some twice her height. Some she crab-crawled over, while others she faced inward, hugging the surface to control her slide. Where the drops bottomed, mud or shallow pools awaited her landing.

After inserting herself through several slanted, increasingly constricted passageways, the woman paused to rest against a wall, hydrate, and check her map. She had traversed nearly a half-mile of the gulch's length. Along the route she caught glimpses of prehistoric art, depictions made outside her reach. She thought about those humans. About survival, her's and theirs. Beyond the drawings, the vertical cliffs folded back at angles that hid their upper edges from her view.

The woman resumed, struggling to lace her way out of the thinnest of the slots. At its exit, the narrow was blocked. She scrambled atop the rock and lay flat to glass the terrain ahead. The gorge took on a wider box-shape and was filled with a glow of late-morning sun. Below, cottonwoods lined the edges of an aimless streambed. Nature- and man-made detritus was scattered about.

The woman rotated her body and turned inward. Palming the surface, she eased herself over the chockstone into a near-upright position as she embraced its slick face in a search for hand- and toe-holds. She began working her way down the abrupt decline, descending only a few movements, then felt her hold break.

Quick, the scrape-sound of detachment, where hands become defenders of body from rock. Deceptive, the brief sensation of weightlessness, ended boots-first with a loud splash and a near falling-over. Steeped knee-deep in standing water, she was startled by the distance of the drop—a good body-length further than any of the others—and the depth and the chill of the water on her skin.

~~~

The pinging echoed through the canyon before its source came into view, the sound intensifying and layered upon itself, reverberating. The woman spun around and cleared the pool, bounding free in two crashing leaps. And then she halted.

Above the rim, the dark, raptorial silhouette of a motorized parachutist broke across the gap of cyanic sky, its pilot slowly throttling up the canyon. In a fluid motion, the woman grasped the sides of her poncho, swinging them outward and then forward and inward, enveloping her gear as she dropped to the ground, concealing herself among the rock. The pilot snaked rim to rim like he was stitching a wound in the torn earth. The woman held motionless. Water dripped from her clothing and drained from her boots. After a short while the flyer passed overhead, continuing in a track back-and-forth, and away.

She waited a few minutes more as the thrumming motor pulled out of earshot, and then she sat back, removed her boots, emptied out the water, gathered her thoughts. She would not be traveling far this day.

A short distance after beginning again, she came upon a message. Etched slightly above her height, in the wall to her left. In capital letters: NEMO. The woman heard herself read it aloud. Nemo. She did did not recall ever knowing the word, and its meaning was lost on her. High above, the massive arch bridged the dome-edged walls, knuckled at the sky.

The woman stayed close to the side of the canyon as she descended, keeping on the lookout, watching for spaces she could make herself disappear into. And then a boat. A cabin cruiser, stranded in a tilted perch between two slabs of sandstone. A convoluted nautical mirage, raised up like an offering captured by the rocky palms of the desert arroyo.

Divine Intervention, the vessel's name, placed near the starboard side rear, remained partly visible. Beside it, four words in black spray paint. She read the words: No god. The other two were obscured behind a layer of flat red. She thought it overkill; a hurried, messy look of spatters and drained-out lines. The woman stepped back and took in the irony, the metaphor, the absurdity of the entire juxtaposition.

~~~~~~

Owen dreamed of glass. All the broken pieces, everywhere, scattered, over floors and furniture, countertops, some jagged, threatening, some insignificant, like grains of sand. Everywhere, glass, as ubiquitous as dust.

Owen woke. He uncovered and sat, hunched and motionless at the edge of his lonely bed in his quiet room in his empty house, and stared at the planks where his feet rested. He thought of things imploding. Owen wondered if the imagery signaled his own inward collapse. He thought a while longer, and then he wriggled into a pair of slippers, stood, walked to the restroom. He urinated, stepped to the sink, washed his hands and cupped a few cold splashes of water to his face. Owen was vaguely aware of the movement reflected before him, but refrained from making eye contact. He had to be more resilient, he thought. He dried off and went into the kitchen.

Owen took a caramel-colored pottered mug from the cabinet and set it on the counter, beside the coffee maker. In another time the machine worked with an industrial-like reliability; it was among the last of the consistent refuge that was once his life. He thought of her and where she'd gone. He wondered if he would ever see her again. Remember me, Ravina. The words came softly, under a suppressed whisper of a thought. Owen placed a kettle on the stove and lit the burner.

~~~

Owen dreamed of things broken, strewn, colorless, everywhere, broken.

Owen woke, uncovered, sat. A hunched and motionless figure at the edge of a lonely bed in a quiet room in an empty house, he stared at the planks where his feet rested. He thought of things transparent. Owen wondered if the signs were always there. He thought a while longer, and then he reached to his left, pulled open the nightstand drawer, removed the clunky weapon, laid it over his right thigh. Owen gripped the revolver in his right hand, his left palm stayed turned up as his thumb and fingers rolled slowly over the cylinder's contours. He regarded its weight, considered its purpose. He felt a suffocating crush of doubt and uncertainty cast upon him. Careful in your thoughts, he heard himself say. He wondered what he was still doing there. Remember me.

~~~

Owen leaned back against the kitchen counter and waited on the setting sun. His gaze crawled over textures, stalled on angles and contours and space, drifted across color, lingered through the pattern like a curator appraising the dimension and detail of an elaborate mural. His thoughts were elsewhere though; on cause and effect, and humankind, choices, things he could not retract, survival. Owen thought about the dogs. The last of them went away with the humans, mostly. The abandoned, unaccustomed and unadaptable, fared briefly to dehydration or starvation. Others, males, lured away at the deceptive promise of a coyote, met their end by a quicker violence. Owen thought about humans and dogs and states of desperation. How long had it been since the last sighting? Did it even matter? Ravina. He knew that he would need to leave soon.

When it was time, Owen moved to the outer walls of the house. He pressed in and reconnoitered through windows where draped edges of dark curtains concealed his presence. The constant vigilance wore at him, keeping readied for the dangers that lurked in the lull of complacency. They were always there, just out of sight, he was sure of it.

At last light, Owen returned to the kitchen, waited an hour more, and then went outside. After a few steps he paused to look up at the sky, his entire view a confluence of black and brilliance. The wind undulated over the land in a barely-audible hush and carried a chill that he could feel against the tightening skin on his face. He walked a short distance to a small rusted dome hidden among the tallgrass. The lid protruded slightly above the surface. A single hole marked its center. Owen squatted over the hinged cover, hooked a gloved index finger into the opening and pulled back, slow and controlled with his other hand braced against it. He removed a flashlight from his pocket, reached inside the chamber and turned it on. Illuminated strands of torn-away cobwebs clung to his glove and the metal sidewalls. The guage read four percent: as exhausted as his insular existence and invented scenarios. Owen exhaled. The ghost of his breath vapored away into the night. The world carved him out and the stars would take what was left.

~~~~~~

It sounded as if it came from a long way off. And Harrison was sure that that was barking he’d heard. He laid tensed in the predawn still of the campsite and listened. His eyes fixed upward on the faint clouds of his exhales drifting off in silent cadence, disappearing into the lingering dark. And there it was again. This time Harrison couldn’t move fast enough. He scrambled to the young girl, still fast asleep a few feet away, shook her at the shoulder, and whispered, V. Her startled eyes opened with a raw abruptness and met his. The quaver in her soft voice betrayed her fear as she replied, Papa.

V, at once alert, slipped out of her sleeping bag and hurriedly packed it away. Within scant minutes Harrison finished attaching their gear to the paramotor frame. Seizing the aluminum tubing with one hand, he gave the recoil cord a quick pull with the other. The engine roared to life. Harrison raced to harness himself to the machine and then crouched low as V approached him from the front, jumped toward his chest, wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight, wriggling her feet into the frame. Harrison took hold of the controls and at full throttle began to sprint out over the rocky open ground. The parachute billowed and gave rise behind them. The motor was loud and the frame rattled and they did not speak. Briefly, V struggled to keep her grip as she was jolted about. And then it was over. She felt herself launched from the ground, ascend, elude.

Several dozen feet up, Harrison began a slow bank to the left and continued to climb as he maneuvered their getaway toward a gap at the end of a broad, shallow valley. Looking behind them, V watched as a pair of dogs and their owners exited the trees at the edge of the clearing, near where their campsite had been. One of the pursuers dropped to a knee. A moment later, V felt a tug at the left of her jacket, alongside her ribcage. She felt Harrison’s tensed body arch rearward and then become loosed and she craned her head back to see him gasping. The single crack of the rifle was inaudible over the motor. The bullet cleaved the sky to reach its target, tearing into Harrison’s back, rooting his lung and making an exit from his chest before grabbing at V’s jacket.

The wind rushed over the back of V’s head, bringing her dark hair to flutter steadily out in front of her face. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. They turned cold and dry in the onslaught.

Harrison passed over a thick stand of pine to an opening that revealed a pair of decrepit buildings and a billboard on the far side of a blacktopped road. He struggled to navigate as the paramotor became unwieldy under his control. Harrison’s ears were ringing and his head didn’t feel right. He could taste blood and he could see fragments of light sparkle across his periphery. The early morning sky was clear and the acute angle of the sun splashed over the terrain, casting long, exaggerated shadows—a vivid contrast of dark images crossing the landscape in imperceptible retreat from their luminous outlines. Harrison thought it strange to take notice of such beauty in this moment.

~~~~~~

The room was painted infinite white. No walls. Floor. Ceiling. Only a long line laid suspended in front of him. Horizontal. Left to right. Simple. Distant. Owen gazed from his precipice, unable to turn away. Paralyzed in its axis, he couldn’t make sense of the stark geometry.

Owen woke. Pulled back the blanket. Stood. His ears rang.

Standing in the front doorway, Owen viewed the vast, starry sky. A short distance to the west a coyote howled, setting off a catenulate of sirens that erupted into the valley below. Seconds later, the cries that extended for miles to the north ended. Owen was exhilarated. He took a deep breath, exhaled, hoisted his pack, and began to walk the gravel road down the open slope to the northeast. The audible crunching of rock underfoot and its vibration through the soles of his boots were magnified by the weight he carried. The details of the sandstone cliffs etched into the valley, the rolling grass-covered hills, scattered stands of pine, and the mountains beyond were still veiled by the night.

At the bottom of the hill the gravel ended at a T-intersection. Owen turned east. The next half-mile of the route remained visible from his house before disappearing into the jumbled countryside. The road stayed to the right of a creek still bloated by snowmelt from a late spring runoff. Owen walked the road, which snaked along the canyon wall to its exit a few miles beyond. Where the creek parted south to join a river, he dropped his pack at the side of the road and downshuffled the short distance to the shore. After finishing off a water bottle, Owen attached it to a ceramic filter, crouched at the water’s edge, sank the filter nozzle into the creek and then held the device in one hand while he pumped its lever with the other.

It was daybreak when Owen returned to the road. He took a few steps then stopped to adjust his pack. The remains of a gas station and motel lay a short distance ahead. The sound of a motor could be heard to the east.

Owen hustled to the other side of the road. Seeking cover, he disappeared into the trees, where he stood stock-still in the rush of the adrenaline-seized moment. The sound of the motor intensified. A shot rang out. Owen felt a pandemoniac wave crash through the serenity of the surrounding forest and blow right through him. From over the trees emerged a flying apparatus. The paramotor scarcely clearing the treetops on its haphazard course toward the buildings.

V clung to Harrison as his arms dangled loose at his sides. She looked down to glimpse a road pass beneath them and then a large metal post protruding from grass and before she could look up felt the jolt of the paramotor sideswipe the billboard and pitch headlong into the base of a hillside. V lost her hold in the melee, striking the ground with a force that thrashed her shoulder, hip and thigh. Winded and dazed, she slowly curled onto her other side. Her left hand stung. Opening and closing it in front of her face, V’s focus shifted beyond its blood-smeared appearance to Harrison, who, several yards away, lie crumpled, facedown, motor running atop his back, parachute slack beyond his feet.

Countering his effort, Owen was jostled side-to-side pendulum-like by the cumbersome load upon his back, though he hardly noticed on the run toward the downed flyers. As he approached the base of the billboard, Owen came upon a child, on her side and turned away, toward a man a slight distance up the slope. The growl of the attached motor a menacing beacon signaling their pursuers.

Are you alright? Owen shouted over the noise, as he reached for the girl. In a sharp reflex, V twisted to face him and retracted in alarm. The look of fear further unsettled Owen. V did not answer. Owen quickly removed his backpack and went to the wrecked pilot, whom he found prostrated, evident by impact, and lifeless, evident by gunshot.

The men and their dogs threshed through the trees a distance off, Owen was sure of it. He also knew there’d be no escaping on foot. Hurriedly, he positioned himself above Harrison, tilting his body downslope, angling the edge of the caged propeller against the ground, gaining access to the harness, removing the paramotor, being overcome by the shrill wail of sorrow that only a child, upon realizing her loss, could emit.

Imminent death, igniter of the mechanisms of survival, converged. V languished as Owen hastily checked the fuel, familiarized the controls, hefted his pack to the frame in place of Harrison’s, struggled the paramotor to his back. He turned his attention to V, taking a knee and outstretching his hands toward her, gesturing an urgent plea. We have to go! he implored. They’ll be here soon! We have to to go now! V didn’t scrutinize the situation.

Encumbered by his co-opted flying machine, shocked passenger and waning confidence, Owen stood slightly off-kilter, opened the throttle and began a slow-motion run on the slight downhill toward the road. The parachute filled with wind and in one swift movement lofted to fully-extend overhead then whipsawed to land behind them in an abrupt collapse. Owen stumbled forward and an already panicked V released her hold, nearly falling over backward.

They were at the road’s edge. Wordless the pair regrouped. Farther down on the other side a black-tailed mule deer bolted from the forest then disappeared into the trees beyond the buildings.

A second backfire didn’t figure into Owen’s plan. Unbowed, legs and motor again accelerated. The parachute billowed and lofted. After a few lumbered yards Owen pulled his shoulders back, leaning rearwards into the run. The propeller angled downward he immediately broke contact with the ground. Now airborne, he followed the road, his flightpath to the intersection ahead.

As Owen anxiously versed himself in the wing’s steering sensitivity, cack-handedly working the brake toggles to avoid trees, telephone lines and power lines on either side, V stared back at the shrinking scene of loss, at the still figure of the man faded into the distance, at the hole now in her line of sight. She released her grip with one hand and stretched to where the bullet had bore through the propeller netting shield. Her finger, falling short of the torn fabric, traced its silhouette in the air. Goodbye, Papa, she whispered.

A creek. A turn west. The canyon was a narrow U-shape of shallow depth, its slick walls layered in swaths of bleached grey and soft flat orange, now aglow in the morning sun. They stayed right of the road, keeping their distance from both the rock wall and creek. Ahead, their shadows preceded them along the winding valley floor, while below, lush grass reclaimed the ranchland of untouched-looking abandoned homes plotted every five or ten acres, an occasional partially-submerged cottonwood revealed the contours of the flooded creekbed’s natural edge, a smattering of pines crept up and adorned the canyon walls.

V felt an acceleration. A turn. They crossed the blacktop. The small valley behind them now as Owen followed the line of an ascending gravel road that within a couple minutes reached the hill’s summit. A place where the unfolded land cast views big and wide and that overwhelmed and dizzied the perception, where earth and sky melded, become a convexed panorama compelling plasticity of the imagination otherwise made ungraspable by the mind’s need to level any measure of the unknown, to distill the euphoric to a value of that whose sum is contained within the space of an isolated vista, but blindered to be revealed, remains as incomprehensible as the butterfly within the chrysalis.

~~~~~~

[garyhermes]

Noah’s Tearful Revenge

If I had tears For You My world I’d cry them out Like nothing else mattered I’d flood your backyard I’d drown your hopes And eviscerate your dreams They’d fall so hard Like nothing else mattered They’d fall so hard And wash away Your indifference And wash away Your disease And wash away Your possessions And wash away

You And all that you have become My children Thousands of years passed And all that you have become

[garyhermes]

The Dispossession of Isleta de Bouvet

In the first days

Isleta, like the one who followed

Scanned the distant surface

Searched the unbridgeable void

Attempted to breach the infinite space

Her eyes traversed the alien contours

Remote and barren as any forsaken shore

Absence, her discovery

It would be the measure that revealed

The emptiness expressed between them

[garyhermes]

Within You Without You (Conversation on a Front Porch)

They sat in the shade of the front porch and quietly took in the early minutes of the evening. The sun was dipped behind the backside of the house, while a cool drift of sea breeze carried the scents of waffle cones, cod and hand-cut fries that were moments earlier served up at the downtown shops a few blocks away. The unhurried birds of late June layered the air with varied and unremittent tones. An occasional car passed. The girl squirmed atop a creaky wooden chair as she looked over at the old man.

Papa, she said.

Yes? he replied.

Papa.

He turned a slight glance to the left and downward toward her, conscious of being briefly captured in the mesmeric green of her eyes before they flitted away.

I heard Cassy’s mom say, “Don’t take candy from a stranger … unless he offers you a ride.” I think that’s how they met.

How they met?

But what else could it mean?

Whatever could it mean? It’s incongruent.

I think that’s how they met.

How who met?

How strangers meet.

Bring it home.

Well, sometimes I think things don’t happen to you unless it’s from within you.

Papa, she said.

Yes? he replied.

Sometimes I just wonder that when she was little if someone would have said to her, “Do the opposite of everything I tell you.” If… and so then she didn’t.

She didn’t what?

Papa, do you hear that crow cawing? I think she is waiting.

Waiting?

For another to fly away with. It’s been cawing for a while now. Maybe soon she… I think she’s going to leave.

Leave? Why?

Because sometimes things wont happen to you unless it’s from without you. Like when a…

The girl stopped speaking and exhaled a nervous little sound as the buzz of a honey bee entered her immediate atmosphere. She imagined it clipping into a frizzed wave of her chestnut hair while it briefly lingered in an orbit about her. And then it was gone.

All too easily the two fell back into their quiet state. The conversation was ended as if it never had begun and without having taken notice, in the fray of those few seconds, of the disappearance of the crow.

[garyhermes]

Launching Pad

Her's was a generation steeped in love and war That sought meaning in words Of birds like hawk and dove And what are we fighting for I never knew which side she stood When I passed on by her door There were other things That tried her then I'm sure When I look back now I imagine she was thinking Take me to the sun-drenched desert in a faraway land I will wave to the Gemini though he'd never raise a hand When I drive on past where the metal Giant stands Down the 66 West toward red canyons and sand Never made it to Haight-Ashbury or the Fillmore But she had Woodstock on LP Childhood friends The beach at a quarry-lake shore A young boy The dream of something more Than a place on South Outer Drive And small town lore When I look back now I imagine she was thinking Take me to the sun-drenched desert in a faraway land I will wave to the Gemini though he'd never raise a hand When I drive on past where the metal Giant stands Down the 66 West toward red canyons and sand (for DC)

[garyhermes]

[garyhermes]

The Last Goodbye

The years they have worn hard on me Is this not the place I always wanted to be Looks like all those plans were for nobody

Bounded down come set me free When words aren’t enough to find release

So I guess this is our last goodbye I’d have said it first If I had known why For I loved you before you knew If the time measured mine While the gravity of my thoughts Kept me grounded to the vine

The miles they have worn hard on me Is this not the place I ever needed to be Looks like all those plans were for nobody

Bounded down come set me free When words weren’t enough to bring release

So I guess this is our last goodbye I’d have said it first If I had known why For I loved you past the moon If the distance measured mine While the gravity of my thoughts Kept me grounded to the vine

[garyhermes]

4.3.33

Loudly clapped the thunder And stirred did the sky Awakened, released, the torrents Where intersected lies

Passed they blurred asunder Through crowds acquainted by Chemical painted as emotion Channeled in colored lines

From the palette too spilled mercy There love was sacrificed As tears met blood and made away Stole truth into the night

[garyhermes]

A Towering Cumulus

When I was seven years old my mother would load my bothers and sister and me, along with all our beach gear, into the circa mid-60s sky-blue Chevy Impala sedan. We would make the drive through the flat backroads of the central Illinois farmland to a small lake near the intersection of Route 45 and Peotone Road.

The lake was a manmade sandy-shored oasis, encircled by a corn-soybean rotation that stretched far past the horizon. At the water’s center floated a platform of wooden planks, where kids would lay to catch sun and dive off. This was a good place to be on a hot summer day.

It was on one afternoon there that a woman began calling out from the beach for her son. When he did not appear, she quickly became frantic and a few others joined her in shouting. A sense of panic overwhelmed the beachgoers as the children were told to get out of the water, while the lifeguards and several adults ran into the lake and began to search. Many of them grasped hands, forming a chain as they waded. The air was full of noise and whistleblowing and yelling and crying and silence. At the shore, the boy’s father sat helpless in his wheelchair.

Ten or fifteen minutes must have passed before the body of the lost boy was discovered, found floating, trapped against the underside of the platform. For the witness, shocking and tragic the exit a fragile and temporary life makes. And the witnessed, if only someone on that raft had sensed the struggle or heard the cries of a small boy looking for a good place to be on a hot summer day.

[garyhermes]

Preflight Ramble

seconds / life briefly passes / you turn / a look back / memory flashes / was it too bright / too short / a cosmic burst / did you fill your thirst / could you take it in / close your eyes / find your senses / lose your nerve / feel your head swerve / did you pass the signs / leave the roads / leap the fences / lose your own / could you seek no place / experience grace / find the ultimate space / a smiling face / did you love the chase

~~~

with eyes not opened / and a sound not heard / a wordless thought takes flight / one last chance / before you lie / a timeless glance / passes by / a cloud / outside the window / it's an open book / another look / a chance to justify / your existence

[garyhermes]

Borders

It begins at the restless dusk Drawn of your solitary night In a place where thoughts, like rain Come to fall, come to fail

Where ghosts rise As antagonist and witness Within the walls Staining tales of existence Purchased of deeds past or future not

Called to collect Nonetheless

On your lot

Only now, but now lasts forever And if eyes are for seeing

Then clearly

A mile on your feet Would be a one way trip To the therapist’s seat Or an ocean of pure beauty

And you sail her blue Till you’re shipwrecked in thought But the isle of contemplation Is no place To wait out your storm

Is no place for you There is no place for you

There’s no place

Like a room so empty in a faraway land With a half-made bed and one pair of shoes

Alone on the floor

(for sNt, 10.13.95)

[garyhermes]

Two Eggs, One Coffee, No Toast

A brief tour of the hotel breakfast offering was a disappointment. I foraged two hardboiled eggs and a coffee. The separate, recessed dining area was a short walk around a corner and down a few stairs. Cory guided me there, to a tall rectangular table, where he stood at my left along a row of stools, pulled one out, said he would be back in a minute, then left. I set my items down then took the seat, believing I occupied the table’s right forward corner.

A couple on the other side were busy talking at each other of all the places they’d been and had yet to be, working their way down a checklist that they managed to make sound more important than the places it named.

I took a sip of the coffee, its taste a reminder that I was already careened off-schedule for the liberal a.m. dose of catapult-awake-strength espresso that my mind n body’d long been accustomed to. Such a kind and generous act to self, this ritual. Finding a sanctuary to indulge and render homage would be the objective after we checked out.

I removed an egg from the styrofoam bowl, cracked it once against the table and began peeling, briefly abandoning my shelling gaze to glance up at the motion to my left. As the tall, lean figure with short-cropped hair laid out breakfast and prepared to take the stool next to me, I returned to my task, and, in a slow, casual Gumpian, began to speak. “Mama gets upset when she catches me peeling an egg. Sometimes she takes it away and peels it for me.”

I paused, then looked back up to discover that I had acquired the undivided attention of my newly-arrived-but-still-standing table-mate, whose mouth was already agape and in the process of forming the beginning sound of its reply. I also saw that something was not quite right in the triangular shape of its toothy half-smile. The words came in a distinctly female tone, wrapped in a smartly, patronizing delivery. “Is that right?”

Horrified… I was. I was equally determined to stay in character, and continued. “I’m sorry. I have a visual impairment and thought you were my son.”

For this, she had no response.

I made a terrible job of the egg, each subsequent bite resulting in what I feared to be an audibly more distorted, reverberating crunch. Now, beyond self-conscious, I was convinced my neighbor thought I did not provide full disclosure in the needs category. Where was Cory? I cracked the second egg against the table and began to peel. At this point I was also certain she suspected my “son” to be wholly a product of my imagination. And then, to my right, the unexpected, beautiful sound of wood-stool legs scraping upon hard-tile floor. “Hey, Dad.”

Hmm. Turns out I wasn’t in the corner.

The remainder of our time at breakfast was uneventful. Though afterward, Cory made mention of a woman at the table, who had her back turned to us as she fed her young child, and, oddly, appeared to be shielding the youth from something in our direction.

[garyhermes]

Framing the Morning After

He was awakened by the soft clink of a ceramic mug set on the waxy, deep-black hood of the Accord. The rising, organic vapor of the local-roasted brew visible through the front windshield. This was her car. The coffee, concocted in the kitchen of the condominium above. An offshore west north-west breeze commingled with a 6:37 sunrise before silently slipping the gated entry of the parking garage, its 54 degree trace made detectable by its intersection with the heated, evaporating chemicals of vanilla and drip. What was he doing, sprawled in the front passenger seat? Executing a quiet, deliberate movement, she became rested, perched really, with her lower back in an arch over the driver's side front end of the vehicle. He was in love with those moves, and could, with enthusiasm, describe her yogatic nature to any curious passerby. She was angled for that all-encompassing selfie that would inspire more questions than it answered. Why without garment, save for the fabric loosely kerchiefed about his neck? And for what purpose fulfilled? Of course, he would have his own questions, most pressing as to how he arrived at this place, and, outside the capture of her lens, why was he fitted, rather, molded, no, compressed, into a pair of women's briefs--a swirly psychedelic two-tone mango (Mango? Really? Of all the produce section possibilities, mango?), nonetheless. She also would have questions. The kind that could tease and tangle, while not seeking the simple answers, or any at all. As the burst of light discharged off the dark paint, the bounce flash perfectly illuminated her background subject. There were no witnesses to their knowing smiles, simultaneous. Later, she thought, she would need to reduce the red-eye of her subject's pupils.