The shape and shade of things

Attempting to explore the world before the end.
And that’s not a melodrama.
It’s just what is for everyone.
And the simplest of choices is a telling about what’s explored.
Is it a lie or a truth?

The lies are what came fast this morning.
The narratives and the explanations to no one.
Mind chatter the psychologists might call it.
But my ambition is to see the true shade and shape of things real.
To feel a body that can glide across an ocean or a court or a sheet of ice.
To chase a ball like a dog.
To squeeze some life out of a scene.
To pull bitter coffee down the throat under 5AM stars.
A soft orange tint to an unknown planet next to Orion.
To name it is to fall back into chatter world.
49-degree weather.
To name it is to forget its cool caress on the face.

An ambition to study the shape and shade of things.
To visit another with touch while they pay attention intensely.
To arrest the rays of a street lamp as if they were the last things ever to be seen.

But the stories and the naming and the arguments come fast this morning.
The untruths layered on like a time-lapse claymation.

All before the sun-up, there were conversations with pretend adversaries;
bills to pay;
goodbyes to say;
speculations about how many days left here;
musings about meanings and matters.

But all of that – like the phyla of plants around me –
just an exercise in monkey naming 10,000 things.
Scientist pretending to know how it works.
Bug collector not feeling the actual bugs.

And it seems like the others are dead serious about their cares.
Hell bent against seeing the stars above.
Professing a disappointment about a political outcome
or a TV news program they’ve adopted as a hobby.
Reliving an unjust traffic infraction.
Counting piles of money they may or may not spend.

And the sun below the edge of the earth turns the sky
a lighter shade of phthalo blue.
A new brightness of blackness.
Erasing the stars one by one.
Coyotes retreat to their dens.
I see what’s here and argue that others don’t.
Knowing I see very little of it, too.