Emptiness

Emptiness


Autumn has not yet arrived though it is quite late
in the day.  Perhaps she has unexpected lengthy
errands, or a minor but fatiguing illness that keeps
her home.  No cause for worry.
I am uneasy.  Without her magic to fill me, time weighs
too solidly.  I want counter force of night activity to buffer
the enormity.
Daytime energy is low before twilight’s call to cycle upward.
I try moving about this place as if she were here to encourage
animation.
My body, so old, so young, so familiar, so despised for its
endless demands.  Movement is a better focus.  Oppressively
physical noun becomes lost in the fluid verb, forgotten, usurped.
I am wind, rain, kinetic.
This space is fixed, walled in.  Without Autumn’s transforming
I am bound, cramped.  How did I do this before, all those
incredibly empty days?
I remember, and put myself into trance, empty waiting for dark’s
vigor to take charge. In the inner theater trance reveals, clowns
and courtly jesters point outward and laugh.  Softly colored
balloons bubble to the ceiling over the stage.  They carry
cryptic messages.  I’ve seen it all before.  These mages never
help me.  They appear for show, vile stabs of hope for
transcendence.  It is not knowledge nor enlightenment
I lack.  My emptiness is so much larger.  Distraction, gift of
Autumn’s presence I let myself depend upon; brutal insistence
of hunger; flights of fancy I embark upon from observing the
city’s plays and my soliloquies.  These ethereal treats contain
no power to fill more than insubstantial moments.
I feel darkness rising, the sun’s eloquent descent.
I emerge into blessing of night after day’s helpless agitation.
A blessing replete with homage to cruel, merciless gods who
haunt me, eternally.
Relentless heat has turned the street into a trance of empty-eyed
desperation, inert anger intent on search for igniting sparks.
I am no catalyst.  A silent observer caught in my own intentions.
Ironically designated protectors of the peace are less restrained.
Sirens, dying blood, tragic waste and wanton terror enjoy inflammation.
It is not my war.  It is not even a productive movie.  Tears against
fire.  Blood, bones, skin against bullets.  Death against hope for
liberty or justice or sanity.  None of these belong to me.
I endure without valence, immune to death or ravages of life.
I am fortunate to find my river beach empty.  The action is all
circumscribed to concrete and tar lit up by tools of open surveillance
wielded by those with that power.  Here in relative dark, outside the zone
of loud retort and bombast, I invisibly reflect upon muggy, still
water.  I insist to my consciousness that Autumn is fine,
uninvolved in this madness of violent street display.  In not so many
hours she will greet me with thrilling tales attached to beauty,
to relief of safe return.
I am entertained by ideation of taking a turn as scavenger rather
than predator.  Rather than hunt fresh prey, hunger may be
satisfied on sloppy remains, last seconds of bleeding out vitality
left in obscure solitude after break up of hostilities.  Sordid spoils
of a broader emptiness.