on knowing

I’ve been keeping really quiet and still. Talking in murmurs and hushed tones to myself. Keeping all movements small, smooth and glacially minimal so as not to surprise them with a sudden jerk. I’ve built a den and camouflaged it to disguise it. I’m hiding deep in the inside of a full job list, keeping myself busy and the taskmaster Time fully occupied in every moment. I’m keeping the spotlight up to full strength on the foreground tasks and hoping, hoping to be invited by a shy whimsical softness to the other side.

On the other side, things come gently, at just the right time. Strange and glorious harmony and symmetry happens all the time, a quiet aside here, a glance up just in time there, the portal open and flowing with fortune. Bright ideas come softly in the night, lightly as if just mid thought, coming to the surface at just the right moment... In the background of modem life, there’s poetry, music, joyful laughter and the golden energy of sunlight.

I see them there sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, resting gently in fragrant grassy bowers, reclining alongside each other, getting along. Their heads incline towards each other, intelligence gilding each beautiful line on each beautiful face as they lean in, listening, and light each other up with their eager interest. Their bodies are lithe and fluid and every now and then one of them will rise with easy grace, and dance away, skipping, smiling, tumbling for joy to join another fizzing fairy circle in the distance. 

Sometimes I can’t stop myself. Jaw clenched, hands grabbing and grasping, I turn impatiently towards with them, with all the ferocity of desperate longing crudely evident in my wild eyes, and then, with no apparent sign or signal, all chins lift with soft smiles aslant, as one, and with a slight flicker as of many wings, they slip away.

dec 2022