Deep in the Dark

awake in the dark in the last days of warmth

before the sun

the freeze is coming and the squirrels can feel it in

the breeze from the hawk’s talons close upon their back.

red lights, white lights, the neighborhood sleeps but the thirsty road keeps on drinking

down the gas 

mania underneath the serpentine cement (a drain plug down the sewer - recovered with a crowbar and a grin).

subterranean:

most of the flow, 

is beneath the surface.

If it keeps on burning, the rapid will be submerged, and according to Dave, Chuck and Fred, 

we too will be subterranean, techno-trolls in smogy caverns, claws upon our backs in the

feeding frenzy.

A kingfisher sits, white belt about her neck, daintily plucking a fish from the canal.

The land is fat, the river lazy, wide, a few pointy rocky holes here and there, on the swirl, the current is playful - fast whips into boily eddy lines, the beaver slide, juicy, ripping, bucktoothed and squirty; stay upright to avoid the river's teeth.

No mist today, barely any spray foam, no brown chunder dome off the dino’s back, just two engulfing waves on the way to the darkside, which, safely squirted, plants one solidly in the seam, and the avenging hand of the river must have heard me talking sh*t, cause now I’m upside down, fighting the two downwelling boils into the deep deep deep - the dino’s got me, claws around my neck, the paddle brace squirrelling, oh the horror, the brutes, the brutes, the horror, the deep, relax, feather, feather, relax, find the surface, still squirting down down down, the third roll, still swirling, am I even floating, boom, the catch, I’m upright like a great blue heron leaving the eddy, where I can breathe, sweet breath of life, mind voided of thought, body drained of emotion, the river lazy on the downhill, always going down down down, the surface only hints at whats below. Everybody’s excited, the ride is over, please exit the vehicle, here use this handy pile of blasted rocks and concrete.

Back on the ridge in the autumn orange it’s grey and loud with the leaf engulfing machines rolling round, hearing protection for the labor, smoke for all, the deep for none.


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