Quills

feathers wisp

Quills

Magazines and foreign cards, ceramic wine jugs as old relics. Candles flicker, casting shadows of potpourri against the wall, tall, over-reaching; time is caught. Embedded behind the scent lays memory and feeling. Progression becomes obsession until it releases before nestling back home, getting comfortable.

Afterwards, the wax licks the edges of the bottles, thrift store stubs at their wicks end, ready to pop! Whispering this time, through the hole, a silent ‘o’ as if it’s the tree in the forest and everybody’s curious whether it exists or not after it topples.

Listening though, we catch the shift. Two owls hoo! Back and forth they discuss the night. Wind rustles tiny new leaves atop the alders and long willows bristle— synchronized. They grow without complaint in the creek.

Before long, the cycle remains, consistently persistent. It bellows at dusk and toots at dawn, by mid-day it manages a sleepy yawn, acknowledging the soul and without delay late afternoon drifts in, eventually recreating the sky in a cool, longing way.

The stars dance, appearing sporadically, each twinkling a tiny wink creating the rhythm of xylophones in the sky. There is a hum to the navy shadows, a buzz to the air noir. A tango of sorts, without discipline. Loose yet precise. Unyielding, terror-less. Aux naturale.

To mock it could be laughable, to master it, a gift.

In the sky a feather lazily floats through dusty alleyways, reaching the outskirts of a city and gusting across farmland; if gravity ceases it, the wind arrives either as zephyr or an abrupt blast, or the spectrum in between. Whether caught in a shrub or seized by a child, flat and wet, plastered to a sidewalk in the rain, its nimble weight still slips through fingers, or dries into a wispy crunch— weaving lightly through the air.