Читать книгу The Nine Senses - Melissa Kwasny - Страница 20

The Nightingale’s Excuse

Wind, as we walk on the plains. I am crazy about you, that extreme subjectivity. So we duck for the coulees, which is where the cattle go, wearing the ground down between the junipers. Piss-green, to match my peevish mood. Our lives have changed. How is it we didn’t notice? We are gray haired, wandering among ruins. The berries in the drylands are pithy and thick. Tin and glass tossed intact into the gullies. Who knows? Perhaps we are at the end of time. Blue aromatics tucked behind our ears. The nightingale’s excuse: she is too much in love with the rose. Too fiercely jealous to leave. Are you a plant, a tree, the phlox, the sage? You cannot weigh much less than the moon. I am not used to sharing the green-robed angels on high. But here I am, trusting them with you. Between the wagon trail of the quest and the swell of the new, there is a crowded city pouring through the heart. And the self? Nest constructed of field grass and flower paste. One the masters say we must give up.