One among aeons of siblings, turbulent gusts and thrusts of pedestrianized stamps. Beaton, broke, torn. Sitting upon hierarchal ages, below the soil groans. Cold flint sharpened, white bone bleached and gnarled by air.
For years I have been transient. Tossed between differing hands of ages. I have watched cities grow and collapse. I have seen the ever so daring choreography of avian migration. I have witnessed the unending fluctuation in colour of the atmosphere.
I was at the beginning. When tossed in molten heat, brothers and sisters colliding to form jarring precipices to characterize a landscape. I was there whilst fiery communication snarled into beaten fists and the hues of conflict. I have always been here; I too will be the end.
Mutts have barked and waged their own territories of war upon my surface, playful hands of youth have flirted me between cracks in their hands and the warming of the sun.
Click – clack
Countless times I have witnessed the upheaval and removal of a sibling. Out into the unending blue, seen off by a chorus of celebration. Fingerprints of echoes in their wake, rippling timelessly.
Collectively we crawled from out of the blue, dragged over surfaces and formed with a tenacious chemical relationship. Collectively we form epitaphs to the stars, yet we also contribute to the landscape of any who walk.
For aeons I have led and bore witness to the precipice continuously stretching its cavernous hands towards me. Shadows of days tracking their own rhythm. Now the edge beckons me.
Skeletal cries, others of my kind, beginning their journey down, accompany me through the passing of light to dark.
Weathered talons often quicken the descent. As do the slow drag of boots being bitten by dust.
Some stand upon us to gain a vantage point, unaware that we groan with weight reminiscent of our beginning foundations.
Shallow embraces of liquid hasten towards generous baptism’s, as between us, and everything living beneath us, becomes engulfed. Howling winds brought by the dance of moon and tide.
We witness cyclical nature, from the first splinters of sun on warmed surfaces towards the blanketing of solemnness and the quiet of white.
Isolated conversation, without vocal chords remains pinned on one’s mass against another, each of us produces our own pitch, a crescendo when rolling together, an echo when just a few.
Below the jawline of dirt, hurrying between spars vegetation and slats of wood, rabbits playfully chase shadows of one another whilst escaping larger shadowy umbrellas from above.
Hushhh
The gentle tone may whisper across my surface whilst other times with an almighty
swushh
I feel my weight roll on its axis, the clouds herded by the power of wind, a drover of elemental force.
Collectively the crescendo below accompanies it too,
crash hushhh
Two timely devices of the great conductor, with a rise of one hand the waves roll, the other brings the wind to chime.
Jutting out plastic piping carries waste from afar, the satin stain upon surface of earth changes dramatically under different light, vegetation below sucking through condemned roots.
Further west the land splits geometrically, stacks are cast out over the edge, to stand in solemn silence and observe a great sadness of separation, longing no longer pulling the soil together.
Visitors often dare themselves to saunter as close as possible, tempting the same fate of being torn from the land, eyes darting, hands quivering, the heart splitting between fear and want of safety.
Signs which announce borders of danger now precariously balance, teetering upon their own shadows, faced with their own descent.
Bike tracks strewn across dewed grass, children throwing down handlebars as they approach the ledges, the birds shrieking in agreement with warnings from parental throats, the earth uttering up at them softly.
Then there are those who become almost figures of the landscape, participants to its territory.
On the sixth and seventh days a man can be seen trawling the coast, behind his spine, hands pull and twist on a metallic cart.
Today he stumbles forward, wheels cartwheeling in miss timings, his pace slows as his eye skim the horizon for patrons, an eager shout and he moves on, heading for a collective shadow of persons crowded around a dilapidated hut.
Slowing the cart, he raises a hand almost signalling to a silent mule as he begins unfolding its tin sides.
Greased food is placed onto a surface which is then heated rapidly, condiments are thrown and strewn as the shadows begin formulation into a rugged line.
Yet what one may receive from this vendor is not just the quick guzzled blockage of salt and fat, what he also offers is fundamental forgiveness of sin.
Once he has served your beverage and teeth have finished collapsing on themselves, he will enquire about a prayer, a prayer for you.
Cleaning the oil from his hands he will reach arms stretched into the sky, suddenly placing one on your forehead and calling out excessively, the sky does not reply, yet the man seems excited by its apparent muteness and continues to shake.
The patron joins in symphony, closing their eyes and mirroring the quaking, hands a ripening of signs, words tumbling out and up they rise, among the birds the words rise, always rising, until the shaking stops.
He removes his hand and is given thanks, the shadow’s draw back towards the trodden path along the cliffs, the man rubs his forehead with the same greasy rag and moves on.
Always rolling forward, hovering, checking for hungry souls, his invisible silent mule kicking along beside him, stopping once more he tosses waste into a bush and departs.
His presence along the coast is as regular as the unending surges sent from the blue.
Time passes, the fire in the sky dipping to a new orientation.
Two new shadows dance from below.
The thundering force splits particles of sand and stone, some forced closer to the blue others reel in disgust.
One shadow upon another, reaching across waves of weathered dust.
Breath sharp in the air, a pull from reigns halts one shadow.
Both now peer into the surface of that which stretches seemingly forever forwards.
Another sharp pull and clink of chain, yet the hooves dig deep, fear driving itself deeper into the well of the creature.
A paced thrust of foot against nervous skin, mane twitching in response, audible huffs escape its mouth and reverberate across the surface, driven back every so often by the gentle stir of crests.
A hardened thrust sees the creature respond, tenderly it turns its form and begins the slow
descent.
Eyes pitted wide against the glassy temperature, the crests increasing, the shadow from above reassures with a hand to cheek caress.
Deeper it belts, the well inside filling, the beast moving forwards until half consumed by the surface.
Struggling now it kicks against the stone and becomes part of a new play with gravitational law, weightlessness and density colliding.
The rider atop laughs in response pulling harder on the chains, the eyes of the beast furrowed and inward almost. Pure white akin to the foam washing over its ribs.
A turn and the shadows now face back in towards land, feet kicking repetitively, the long stretch for terra begins.
The well drains quickly within, the beast responding.
Out it drags itself with tendrils of the blue snatching at its skin, falling and snapping.
A shake of its frame to dry sends the rider around on her own orbit causing her to bite down hard on the saddle for stability.
Another hand to cheek caress and both appear calm once more, breath slowing and caught.
Triumphantly both rider and beast stride back to their origins of entrance, the light dipping behind and illuminating them, a different type of baptism.
The light now hangs with stretched claws, one more shadow appears from below.
Conclusively the woman installs her feet into stone, sending them showering into the now deeper darker blue.
Staring forlornly, she eventually leans her spoked frame against a larger mass and departs for the edge of lapping waves, tidal withdrawal.
Every evening this woman visits the exact same spot, ghostly geography, after a measure of time her hands will pluck a faded photograph from her cowered pocket.
Placing the image by her side with the weight of a gravel atop, she thrusts her eyes into the unending surface.
Some evenings tears will carve topographical lines across her salted skin, mixing with salvia and returning to the earth, this salt becomes part of the women’s journey, a sorrow of land.
Years previous a soul she loved dearly fell out into the deep blue, never to return.
Now the reflecting surface offered both a place of solace and plains for which anger could roll over, the clouds forming of turmoil, thunderous shouts and knots within stomach.
At once the unending offered consolation and mockery, the waves laughing and sobbing along with her wrecked frame.
For hours she sits until the light no longer allows the image to be conceivable, carefully she places it back into her pocket and flees, the spokes wheeling against the grinding of earth, tears sometimes drying on escape.
Tonight she never even casts a glance back to hated painful mockery.
With the entering of dark, a cinematic glowering begins out over the surface and mimicked from the shoreline, late night rods twinkle in response to farther afield communication.
The town behind a cult of noise light staining the atmosphere.
Time seems slowed, many siblings deep in slumber whilst the unending continues to call, sometimes rolling, sometimes thrashing, yet always calling.
Cyclically light returns, the cult disseminates and a seventh day begins.
With dawn shadows grow tenaciously, first a sliver but with increasing warmth presence grows tenfold.
Younger throats gurgle communication at awaiting parental shadows, seabirds circling eyes fixed for gluttonous consumption.
Dirt stilled, the passing of closer forms often twisting the particles into movement.
First light then suddenly a twist and thunder, darkness was cast over my mass. Shock and warmth.
All around, the darkness grew unsteadily, it felt like the blue had come all of a sudden, yet the warmth told me otherwise.
Muffled noises and dulled vibrations.
I became aware of movement yet it was not present in physicality on my behalf, no, it was the movement of another.
The darkness enduring.
Suddenly another form closed on my surface, no grinding or marked scars, an opposition of form.
Yet more enduring darkness and movement, the dark heightening my sense of awareness.
What had happened to my existence? why suddenly had I been consumed? not by the unending blue but a darker warmth, what was this new movement through space?
More muffled voices until the capsule of abduction began to loosen its grip, suddenly bright light wound its existence into a sense once again.
Then falling, air passing along until it became obvious.
One of those that walks for the pleasure of sight and taut muscles had happened to hitch my form alongside one of his rubber soles, the annoyance of my prominence ensuring a stop on his behalf to empty it.
The cold hitting first, rivulets bouncing and merging with tributaries.
Contact with siblings yet the force at drop kept me bounding, over and beyond their forms, passing in towards the cold, was this the unending?
Gravity ultimately bringing a halt in movement.
A new orchestra of noise, subdued tones, crushed by the weight of liquid.
The composition being too clear for the unending it became deductible that my new location was among one of the many veins which fed into the system of stone and submersion.
One which bounded from above ledges both manmade and natural, wire and rock complimenting one another in practicality and use.
Roots stuck into the edges taken hefty slurps where possible, clay slipping from peaks to form new volcanic formations below, the water staining with twists of different compositions, yet clearing due to the force of passing water.
Down it twisted, away from the carcass of rock to begin its own construction.
Down at the bottom of the pit is where I now lay, among my own kind, nudged gently, the babbling of the brook a distant history, would I remain here forever, until the earth turns black and my form is turned inwards? What possible future may I now have?
It could have been aeons or moments that passed, beneath this submersion I was unware of passing time, the light being my only clue, its warmth casting over the surface, the pinprick of precipitation echoing down, darkness growing and deteriorating.
Until once again another intervention of form became my next progression.
Down from above a shadow came fast, penetrating all surfaces it did not slow as it wrapped around my sides.
Suddenly I was forced upwards, water pouring over until I was dazzled by light, the temperature and force working in combination to clear all signs of water from my surface.
Placed staring forlornly the form opened above me as a young fledgling stared down.
A child bore my weight.
In amongst her hands I felt the warmth radiate, beneath me her hands a conclusion of folds and lines mimicking the cracked earth surrounding her, a stringent story of past and a future just beginning.
Innocence poured.
Her eyes surveyed every pore on my skin, almost checking for imperfections, pouring the gaze of irises down between the crevasses of my own story, my own history, hers forced to collide with mine.
The wind picked up around her hands as she smiled and clasped tight.
I almost knew instinctly what was to come.
From being the solemnness perched ever so careful above I had been witness to many such occasions.
I once witnessed a lover teach carefully the shadow stood beside him, watching her flawed form he corrected posture and was embraced by love and warmth with her eventual success.
It was almost characteristic of a shadows nature to perform this act.
It could attain to an act of anger, an act of happiness or generally just an act of action, a moment to exert circumstances upon the identity of something else, something other.
This child therefore had been infected by the same hereditary reaction.
Once dark and in warmth, the next, hurried wind across surface, orientation spinning, light bounding, my form cast out over the horizon of others.
I could only imagine the spectacle, I soared.
With a crash I came down, splinter dispersion, a bed kicked further aside.
I had prepared for the ultimate fall into the depth of the unending, fear had quivered between every crack, the shock of bedrock tore unbelievably outwards.
A moment I had seconds to prepare for, a journey outward, yet it was a false hand, the joker of fate.
I had fallen short. Again.
Now I sit patiently, the light diminishing, yards in front the ever-stretching form calls out,it moans and whistles for my existence to enter.
To begin an oath of submission.
It screams as fear begins to disseminate with the passing light.
I see others cast and disappear, some slight, others claw at the surface as they plunge, the unending stretching evermore forwards.
It calls.
From above I had been witness to many a thing, from the shadows to the forming of my siblings, the towns had been built beyond me, both in physicality and in future.
Tenses had been twisted.
A culmination of pasts and futures colliding, from above I was able to watch all of this.
To peer at the unending out of fear, out of its apparent want to claim my existence, yet now staring at others and out to its uttering moans I understand.
I understand a different façade, a different past and future, one that now only would have to consume my form, but one that had to have my complacent interruption in order to complete its cyclical nature and ensure its forever stretching advance.
This depth no longer screaming for the fall of myself, rather a calling to myself, a parent to child.
I would have to become part of the undoing to become unending.
The blue was as much my past as well as future, a complete foundation to creation, ultimate submission would only mean a return to whence I first came.
I finally understand.
The light almost vanished, salt licks at heel.
Then it comes, washing over me, around me it pours.
Embraced, the fear becoming symmetry of wave, the unending surrounding, I am consumed, yet willingly I go, out into the depth, out into the unending.