Crack the Spine - Issue 100

tight for sky rides high on stiff incoming winds, sparing breath for beak dives down to the waves.

Not to mention the patient plants, trees that nod into every breeze and stand through every night, fingering countless threaded roots through soil in shade while lifting only green up into light.

But the giving of time alone is what is everything, as nature gives from its reserves of time so generous, so inky deep beyond reckoning that digits we derive from fingers must nest inside each other just to keep from shrinking to a dust or being blown from off the page, so beyond our grasp its cycles loop to suckle us to its skies: Our nights fill up with beetle chirps and breezes off the sea, our mornings rise to follow shadow like the shy and slender deer, our days of honeysuckle never tire of scenting air with bloom, while empty shells make tiny chevrons out of thin receding tide, and sunset shimmers brightly off of glistening sheets of sand.

The wind flings endless buffetings at bracken on the shore, and dashes apart a thousand wave crests without cause.

The ocean stirs beyond the rim of anything we see, and heaves itself like frothing stallions surging over and over and over against the shore.

The open sky is vast, the waters wide.

The hours gallop only when we ride.