before October ripens {a threnody}

the dark matter itself begins to suggest theories of chance; last night i climbed a dream•cliff, bare-handed, single-voiced, the redoubt casting its baleful glare on my efforts. shrieks & caws of the shrikes, kestrels, ravens badgering the lemurs and assorted small mammals all around me, a veritable panoply of gaia herself, self-satisfied self-assured, anomalous. i paused to ask questions, aware of the 2- or 3- or 5-degrees of separation between this and that, me & them, awed at how small the magnificently vast world can be when a word is breathed into life unannounced, unexpected, wise. i pitched my tent on a ledge fronting a crevasse with no end to it: its depth a dark secureness ensteeped in mystery, one i am not all that eager to resolve but am willing to plumb anyhow — the last light of my bestowed-upon arc of day already vanishing from my wrinkled brow into an early evening of some note, some calumny, much anonymity which, at the end of day: my preferred modality. i chuckle…