In These Early Days

He was standing across from the stairs

She sat alone on the stairs

there was no one left but these two

He never looked at her - but once (when she
did not see) - her dark eyes darting from him

She sat there crouched in her black cotton
dress afraid of what her heart knew

there was no strength of power in her

while he stood there

she knew he had seen

And he saw only once that she knew

It was his shape, only his form she was aware
of in the soft brown light - tracing it in her
heart's eye. And then she was aware only of
difference - the utter separateness of him.
There was something burning - a small white
flame in her - softly consuming her in its slow
silent flow of brightness like a sea of light only
she could see

And he standing above her nakedness

knowing only his emptiness

it was the knowledge of essence

a sacred time

When he was putting his boots on she said - though
she thought she never would again - and it was only
when she had - she felt the pain - "will I see you
again?" She could feel him sigh, a sigh of many dust
torn years - many times one question heavy in his
darkness. And what happened next she did not expect.
He smiled. It was the first time she had seen the
emptying of his darkness, the vacuum of his joy and
she knew it as depthless. He watched her watch the
light on his lips, in his eyes - he watched this and saw
too his memories dust turning. It was the knowing.
And he knew - all that he knew came to nothing -
with this brown skinned girl.

She waited (already knowing). He lit a cigarette - and
they both watched him do this. Still he was nervous
about what he was to say. He was vulnerable sitting.
He felt that he saw himself as a young man - he
needed the strength of age - so he stood up - to
remember his years - and said - though this was not
the answer to her question - "I'm not going anywhere."

It was the first time he had surrendered
(and she had no idea of this).

Years later he thought of these words - as he
stood on a dust road in the red scorched earth
of the Never Never. What had he said? How
did he say it? What did she hear? What was the
difference? Was there a difference?

But it was these words that determined time
- what came before - what led to them - and
what would be after (all in those words).
And the dust had no answer.

When he said this, when these words were cut
as to stone - existed apart from these two- "I'm
not going anywhere" - she was shocked -
shocked at how instantly her joy rose to fear -
she was frightened - not like before - when she
first saw him - felt his presence - his dark stone
like existence - she didn't know him then - or if
she did - it was not the knowing of now in the
sunlit morning room - the knowledge had
changed - she wanted now the knowing of
darkness - the knowing of not-knowing - that
fear she could find space for - but this - this
knowing - this light - was altogether without
place

It is the knowing that is the loss of un-knowing

She chose the light

Her face was blank when he looked at her after
he had spoken. After he had said. It was empty
pale and - like her heart draining. And the
memories and the past and the pain flashed
back to her eyes - watching her. She came and
stood in his shadows - now strange and contorted
in the morning light - now no longer as bright
- or as sure or as clear as anything had once
been.

This is when passion becomes time.

In these early days

even so, as time passed the minutes, the hours,
the days - the shadows flying - like black birds
from a skull - he was unsure - unsure of how
much to give - to give to her. Could he give
anything to her? How much to lose to her? Did
he have anything to lose?

It was with the men he felt no loss or its absence
- no question of what to be - and yet for him this
was the only question. Only in her his terror was
no answer.

Where does essence end and accident begin?
When is the difference?

In this ancient tangle of shadows and weeds

She would stare blindly into the flowers, her
hands working their own futile labour - and
wonder how much to take to receive - if there
could be any loss in his touch

Was he always to be separate and apart, never
to be of her fullness?

It was this fullness that was to be the origin of
her despair in generations to come

It was only when they returned - returned
exhausted to the darkness that there was no
question.

Only a black pearl moment

and then the moving away - the shadows
disentangling their black glass softness
into shadowlessness.

This is all that can be

And they knew - but never in the sun -
years could they be at peace with the truth

There were times of great aloneness when
everything was not said. And this was the
secret - like the inside of a miracle

In her garden - the watcher - of growth and
death - she as the watcher of growth and death
- in this garden. Her arms now darker from
the sun. The sun now angry at her endurance.
Her sinews the mesh of time. In her garden
she watched the blind necessity of growth.
She felt the horror of its immutability. She
felt the catastrophe of design. The seed
becoming becoming endless tomorrows from
endless yesterdays - and she toiling the seed
- what an absurdity! - yet from its blindness
- beauty unaccountable - and breathless - in
her - eternity sighing the impossibility of
not-being - and God - so much alone. in her
garden

In these early days

He would drink with the men in the bar.
It was the being of men that was necessary.
It was unstatable


(c) Copyright: greg t. charlton. 2006.