Walking the Corridor

  Darkness      Darkness is an interesting thing, limitless and yet muted by a vastness we as a species cannot explain. Instinctively we pull away from it, as children screaming in the night, as men hastening past shadowy wood lines. In our ignorance, we have become scholars in the school of avoidance, only accepting the shadows we can control. We leave it to rot in the forgotten places of our daily lives; beneath beds and lurking behind attic doors.  And there it waits, patiently, growing thick and palpable. This pitch facilitates our fears, our nightmares, and our imaginations. It is the cold propagator of the universe and the absence of all things, a true enigma.      Our simple minds and sun-fed eyes search for details in the cracks of sidewalks and old men's faces. There is safety in detail; stability reinforced by concrete data. But, the void is formless: a deep well that inspires vertigo and wild thoughts. It is the eternal pool of insp...

Lady (of Paris)           A lot of good men and women found God in that fire. There, a mong  the flames, where the shards of aquamarine rained upon purgatorial faces no longer grey and etched but alive with motion and color. The sun, unaware of the burn, poured out its radiance, painting mourners as morning prayers. Bridges were filled, shoulder to shoulder, eyes wet and red, eyes white and wide. From within the blaze, one could hear the centuries coalescing in cacophonic clanging. Seven blasts. Seven blasts.   And then to see that penitent steeple, how it did bow, its skeletal shoulders slumping forward in voiceless prayer, swooning as if grace still held some providence among those aged timbers and crenelations . How lightly it descended, elderly bones hard and hollow,  thin-skinned, little weight, but heavy in grace. It was. But what was it? What wood? What plaster? What cracks and imperfections?  It will be made anew by the good...