Summer (Part VI)

Was death an afterthought, penciled in to the engrained lines on these branches of foliage? These bare buds from which once burst the colours of Saturn’s rings, now fringed with the nakedness of winter, have grown together as if seeking shelter in each other, as if they could mould together as one mass, and shield themselves from darkness.

Darkness has grown a peculiar smell, the fragrance of lost remembrance. As if ruins have dried and are starting to flake and crumble. Buries itself within pores, folding inward seven times. Everything has a mouth and the world is speaking in tongues. Mountain lips shape vowel sounds as the ocean’s consonants echo in sonar in valleys which are miles deep. Young scientists watch as the animals of the seas are swallowed by underwater trenches.

I hear the scientific debate on the radio as I drive in a car pulled by horses with human feet. The sun is setting on my palms as I grip the steering wheel whilst rain runs through my hair and collects in discs of silver in my pockets. There is a young child beside me in the passenger seat, and I know he is my son. He says he feels safer now the sharks have gone.

Purple streaks fill the sky as those around me chant songs for Orion the hunter. There is a holy man from a religion I do not believe in standing before my eyes and as petroleum filters across my vision I realise my wife has her face turned from me. She is covered by a rainbow from an oil spill as the world seems to close itself under a vaulted sky.

And I’m alone beneath almost touching foliage.