“You have to make the good out of the bad
because
that is all you have got to make it out of.”
Robert Penn Warren
holding
up a slice of an orange crescent moon which burned in his fingertips like a
black-arts
candle
he wondered if
Warren had seen the lean Hermits lantern shining
through
the dagger trees that ran atop the ridge
that jumped and
fell to the valley floor
an
imaginary dotted line - - - where it may have existed had the ancient sea
not eroded it
or
the planets tectonic plates had not turned ninety degrees on end and sank slowly
expectantly into the
soft forgiving seabed - - - the imaginary dotted line ran to the
horizon
to the distant western ridge that
clipped and etched the deep-blue nights sky
the Hermit gazed
back
from their long fearsome wanderings with the things they had sought
those
desperate things they carried
to
share and impart to their querents who would not shy from their filth and neglect
those things
not easily won
either
taken by force in battles gambling they could win or stolen like a rat at grain
when
numbers they faced were too overwhelming or the emergent skills were wiser
not
to stand against
now theirs
their
back bent their head misshapen
they
knew what they could not have possibly known
that
they would be approached and engaged
as if noses were
turned to their breath a fragrant
absinthe
or
their footsteps were heard sounding softly on long-ago mountain fresh snow or
newlyfallen
coloured leaves astir by their breath at the forests feet as they slept or the
devoted
whispers of their sandals as they shuffled on lightning-white ribbons and
curled
reams of blue sea
simmering
on amber sand
Warren
had
he seen the Hermit
was
the Hermit his reflection
or
was he watching me
watching him
growing the good from the bad
1509, Twosday,
1 7. 14
