trying to catch an hour on the sun
SPN, John, PG.
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1.
A photograph: gritty and grey, the long fall of a raincoat, maybe a trenchcoat, this would have to be John, his head bowed in the wind, against the rain, against the slow hard wind, miles and miles, lake-wet, and rain and the city grime, the smoke and chill and pollution, the smog. Something in his hand, cracking leather of the journal? Or silver, glint of metal when he moves, handgun at his side, ready. And this is only a photograph, only an instant, a fraction, and maybe it never existed, to begin with. Certainly he is unaware of it, but then, he's never been much for pictures, for photography, for angle and focus and light. If you showed it to him, he'd probably shrug and maybe he'd say yeah, I was there for a little while, great jazz, or, yeah, it was cold as hell, and he would change the subject, tell you a story, bank robberies or that time in Texas, and you wouldn't notice until later that he never told you why, never told you what he was doing there.
And when you think about it, maybe you don't want to know; it's certainly easier to let it go, to write it off as time and circumstance and coincidence, as something not yours, something to forget. He'd remember it, though. He wouldn't have forgotten a thing, and maybe you could see that, if you knew when, where, to look. What it meant, the pauses between words, the way the light hits his eyes just right, just right, just then.
He remembers. And there's no way for him to explain how, or why, or what it's like to leave, to be run out of town or just to hit the road in the morning, miles and miles of road left untraveled ahead. He has won, and he has lost, and the numbers don't come out quite even, don't come out in his favor at all, but he's still trying, still trying, still here.
He is timeworn and strong and he has learned the value of patience, has learned the lines and lay of latitudes, the crawl of city and field, the bloodred apocalypse light of sunset in the city, meaningless, mostly. He can read lines of poetry in the stars, can find his way by moonlight and starlight and the moss on the trees, can charm slight facts and petty truths out of men with brass knuckles and women who have seen too much, too fast. His hands are gentle, sometimes, and he has seen more death than was ever his right, was ever his duty, than he should have, and he can still laugh, and he can still say mary and my boys and i, i love you and he is, maybe more than ever, alive.
And he did not ask for these long lonely nights on the road, but he has claimed them, and at the end he will find what is waiting for him, he will find out why, he will get, if not satisfaction, at least peace, and while this is a fortune granted to all men, only some have begun to understand it as he does. Only some know, the way he does, that this is where they belong. That this is where he belongs, as he lifts his head to the wind, as the porch, weathered wood, creaks beneath his boots, as he listens to the rise and fall of wind in the trees, and maybe he is lucky in this regard.
Because while he might not have (would not have) chosen this, (of course he would have chosen Mary and life and easy comfort, easy joy, of course) he is aware of his place, of what is to come, of the shape and shifting of the world, of earth and nature and balance, of light and dark and shadow-play. So he breathes in, morning air chapping his hands, his breath misting in front of him, promising frost and bleached fields, broken stalks and pale grey sky, he breathes in and he thinks of his sons, of light and dark, and he believes, he believes, he believes.
And here, in the quiet light of morning, in this relative peace, it's here that he's at home, here, in these few seconds, this instant of contemplation, of culmination, one quiet breath as the corn-husks waver in the wind.
It's here, right here, but of course there are no pictures of this, no photographs. And he'd probably tell you it's better that way, things are better this way, unsaid, uncaptured. And then he'd be gone, but that's just the way of things, just the way.
Instants and coincidences, and you never really get what you're aiming for, anyway.
Just the way it goes.
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--
1.
A photograph: gritty and grey, the long fall of a raincoat, maybe a trenchcoat, this would have to be John, his head bowed in the wind, against the rain, against the slow hard wind, miles and miles, lake-wet, and rain and the city grime, the smoke and chill and pollution, the smog. Something in his hand, cracking leather of the journal? Or silver, glint of metal when he moves, handgun at his side, ready. And this is only a photograph, only an instant, a fraction, and maybe it never existed, to begin with. Certainly he is unaware of it, but then, he's never been much for pictures, for photography, for angle and focus and light. If you showed it to him, he'd probably shrug and maybe he'd say yeah, I was there for a little while, great jazz, or, yeah, it was cold as hell, and he would change the subject, tell you a story, bank robberies or that time in Texas, and you wouldn't notice until later that he never told you why, never told you what he was doing there.
And when you think about it, maybe you don't want to know; it's certainly easier to let it go, to write it off as time and circumstance and coincidence, as something not yours, something to forget. He'd remember it, though. He wouldn't have forgotten a thing, and maybe you could see that, if you knew when, where, to look. What it meant, the pauses between words, the way the light hits his eyes just right, just right, just then.
He remembers. And there's no way for him to explain how, or why, or what it's like to leave, to be run out of town or just to hit the road in the morning, miles and miles of road left untraveled ahead. He has won, and he has lost, and the numbers don't come out quite even, don't come out in his favor at all, but he's still trying, still trying, still here.
He is timeworn and strong and he has learned the value of patience, has learned the lines and lay of latitudes, the crawl of city and field, the bloodred apocalypse light of sunset in the city, meaningless, mostly. He can read lines of poetry in the stars, can find his way by moonlight and starlight and the moss on the trees, can charm slight facts and petty truths out of men with brass knuckles and women who have seen too much, too fast. His hands are gentle, sometimes, and he has seen more death than was ever his right, was ever his duty, than he should have, and he can still laugh, and he can still say mary and my boys and i, i love you and he is, maybe more than ever, alive.
And he did not ask for these long lonely nights on the road, but he has claimed them, and at the end he will find what is waiting for him, he will find out why, he will get, if not satisfaction, at least peace, and while this is a fortune granted to all men, only some have begun to understand it as he does. Only some know, the way he does, that this is where they belong. That this is where he belongs, as he lifts his head to the wind, as the porch, weathered wood, creaks beneath his boots, as he listens to the rise and fall of wind in the trees, and maybe he is lucky in this regard.
Because while he might not have (would not have) chosen this, (of course he would have chosen Mary and life and easy comfort, easy joy, of course) he is aware of his place, of what is to come, of the shape and shifting of the world, of earth and nature and balance, of light and dark and shadow-play. So he breathes in, morning air chapping his hands, his breath misting in front of him, promising frost and bleached fields, broken stalks and pale grey sky, he breathes in and he thinks of his sons, of light and dark, and he believes, he believes, he believes.
And here, in the quiet light of morning, in this relative peace, it's here that he's at home, here, in these few seconds, this instant of contemplation, of culmination, one quiet breath as the corn-husks waver in the wind.
It's here, right here, but of course there are no pictures of this, no photographs. And he'd probably tell you it's better that way, things are better this way, unsaid, uncaptured. And then he'd be gone, but that's just the way of things, just the way.
Instants and coincidences, and you never really get what you're aiming for, anyway.
Just the way it goes.
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