Humansong
Trying to push the boundaries of what might be real, between fingers and palms held into the air. May this exist? Is possibility just a slip away, a slip further than the sight of your stare? Without an piercingly sharp field of vision, the world seems muted, just an indication of what could exist if only one could open eyes and reach for unblinkered daylight, minus mist.
There are times, of course, when it is easier to fall amidst the dazingly dozed, floundering in faraway forcefields, in this space where lines blur, shapes shift and the air just beyond grasping takes on a more ethereal edge.
As my eyes dart from one shape and shadow to another, the radioactive sounds around start to spin and daze. A man in the atmosphere somewhere begins upon his tireless quest of shovelling gravel at windows. He hopes that this action will dislodge the stains of hundreds of thousands of raindrops spat from the sky, restoring the once pristine glaze, scratch by scratch. One can only etch so much. He retires inside, a slight note of defeat moistening his brow, to greet the soon-come morning with fresh juice and the soft breeze of a citruslight touch. Today, the sky will sigh, from tangerine greeting to grapefruit goodbye.
Further aloft, a group sit under rising sun, perched atop a roof, encircling the sole chair, covering the only chimneypot to be seen. Windows and brickwork hem in from every direction but facing upward from rooftipped slate provides their upward airscape. They spent the dusken hours wisely. Cloudwatching. Maybe the sky might burst and tap drips onto the chimneypot to fall down to whichever lies beneath. The weatherstained mock lid covering the chimney, the orange chair may temporarily halt the waterdrip descent, yet at some point it may give way into a vault of quiet nothing. The watchers do not know, and cannot tell. They hum their sleep chorus to drone and dispel.
Behind a supermarket, children, freed momentarily, jump and yell, walking aloft trolleylines and scatteringly casting each wheeled vehicle outwards, waywards, towards tarmac slopes and rattling caged oblivion. Traps on wheels collide and sculpt twisted wireframe wildbeings, pronged into life by the zap of a passing electrical storm. The voices have become shriller as they exude excitement, raising their note before scribbled secrets are found. Over time, their noises dissipate into the lifelike quiet, as an old friend would. Still there, but less noticed. Wondering if they were really there at all. Created or imagined. The best place to be. Not real. Concealed. A sight to feel. A crest-tip wave at sea.
Worried about being seen, I tilt my head toward the below. Find some more words to get lost in. Doused liberally on lily pillows. I’d wish that they could hear this, the humansong by every bird. Yet for every word that writes its shape, fifty more wait to be heard.
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