Wrap it in Words

Figure in a Landscape - Arthur Armstrong

Bones of the dead things bleached in the sun.

Some dawn, some monstrous scorching dawn an age ago, an instant ago, tore into the sky and forced the land and sky apart. A knife eased into the horizon, eviscerating, separating; oh agony.

A step forward, another, another, will reveal the yawning gap. The world ends at the edges. Ahead, the sky and land part company - oh I know, I know, oh - recoiling away from each other in disgust, into infinity. Logic’s anchor has dragged; corners flap loose here, in this place, in this time.

That dawn, the earth cracked and shivered, oh, cracked and shivered, and the abyss opened with a sigh. Dust and seas and souls alike swept down, down, down, caught in the flood of their own passing, until that was left was bones. Colour fled soon after, draining out in a shimmering swan song through the hole in the bottom of the world.

The long day began.  It reigns still.

Dusk will come, or it will not come. No matter, no matter

I stand sentinel.