Spunky Holler

6am in the holler
is a silence where lives
the whole wide world

shrunk to a stillness so deep
outside is just a notion
from a barely-remembered dream.

What rustles the leaves
swirls round the wood
brushes up against your cheek

is the sum of everything—
the single moment,
old and young as earth—

more true than your horizontal
empiricism. Put it away, brother.
Attune your eyes, sister.

Because it happens—now.

Texas

In summer, when rain is scarce, the grass becomes brittle like the husks of locusts and the burrs are keen as green mesquite thorns. Days seem longest when the sun rides high in the glaring utterness of August, when the prickly pear’s yellow flowers begin to wrinkle, searing purple, before shriveling to puckered, withered figs. Long tangles of pasture become cruel to the sensibilities of mammals; where trees are few, the sky and the stupefied earth hum together, a slow arhythmic cadence which sounds, to the human ear, like it might be the music of death, although it isn’t that, exactly—it is the sound of desert heat, the obscene language of the sun, too lucid for the sensibilities of we made brittle as summer grass.

Though my lineage dates to Adam
Though my genetic memory belongs to every continent
Though each acre on earth is quite near to every other
I belong to one place
Am enraptured by one dirt
Enveloped, by a single idea

We saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo earlier this evening, at the State Theatre downtown...Enjoyed it very much, though the theatre itself was terribly uncomfortable--not sure what I'm supposed to do with my knees in this type of venue, with such narrow aisles...Luckily, the picture was so fascinating I did not dwell upon the trauma the proceeding seat was inflicting upon my limbs...

I am currently watching The Verdict--not the Paul Newman/Sidney Lumet flick from the 80s, but the Lorre & Greenstreet film noir, from 1946...A film that easily could've been done by Lewton...And along with The Mask of Dimitrios and Three Strangers, the best of the films they starred in together...Any scene featuring them both cannot fail to entertain--they were each among the finest character actors ever...And their combined chemistry made them even better...