Last Fourth, a True Story

[[Syl]]

The faeries are in the flowers
But the neighbors told me to mow them
“They come back,” they said.

We were the interlopers
Descending on the river valley
Like the last locusts to alight on the field
Our meager arsenal
Less than the impression of a thousand echoes
Dazzling children
But that’s not really the point, is it?
The trauma we add
Is too late, too light
And no one mistakes our flash for lightning
Reaching around the bend
Or throwing ridges into silhouette

The first day fell to abandon
The neighbors forgiving us for having nothing to forgive
Let us fly, watch us fall
Ply us with alcohol and entreat us
To prove my manhood,
Diminished by letting her wield the scythe,
In the construction of destruction
Oxidation and reduction
Without modern means of easy combustion
Viridian crowned in ocher stands
While crimson drowns in caliginous strands

Our new friends abandoned us
Not leaving, for we could hear their laughter down the road
But not leaving their dog to say they would soon return
Incessantly
And so we defied the sun
Floated ahead of the storm
Foundering and frolicking
Wearying ourselves on the wending path
That no one intended to be so long
A child In turn petulant and exultant and back again
Adults apathetic, oblivious, or conciliatory

We drove down the high spine
Determined to hear and feel nothing but see everything
Though we suffered a fool yelling “fire truck!”
And put the pouting baby girl in the back seat
Trees like hats eclipsed the upper lower limits
And the fog-filled valleys stole away the eruptions
Replacing them with varicolored blooms
Like phosphorescent jellyfish rising against a ship’s hull

We defied sleep another night
But would take her sacrament in the deep of it
Long after the intra-locals fell silent
Sharing the dust of dreams
Trying to leave behind the unfortunate son
We catered to for so long
This is how we found ourselves
Weak in the knees but standing at the rails
Seeing the faeries stand where the flowers had been
Unbidden, simultaneously
A question without details, awaiting confirmation
So stable
So real in their ghostly light, ghostly gait
Turning and speaking in utter silence
Recalcitrantly gesturing, defying all angles
All reasoning, all rubbing of eyes,
All system diagnostics
Only redundancy validating a hallucination

We should not have been surprised
Probably should not have been disappointed
When they yielded to our proximity