March 13, 2012

• Wakefulness

  The crystalline seascapes sparkled in the daylight beneath which they openly hid the most illustrious wonders.  Waves lapped on the shore to mesmerize threatening bystanders, to numb their curiosity into idle romances.  The oceanic underworld constantly awaited a true visitor, someone who faithfully disbelieved in its placid appearance.

  Two monks spent two months in a rowboat, away from the castle where they were just cattle. 

  “Where do all the stars go during the day, Frederick?”

  “I don’t know.”
  
  “I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for my soul to be flipped inside out.  To turn into my own sort of night.”

  The rowboat spun its fearful children into a dizzying clarity, a mood of a million mentions of meaning and marrying. 

  “I knew a girl once.  She was sweet, but sad.  We always sat in the same tree and talked, but I think she knew I would become a monk.  One night she kissed me on the cheek before running off.  That was the closest I’ve ever been to a woman, and the furthest for I knew it was her goodbye.”

  “I think we’re the only ones who really know women.  You can only see a well that’s infinitely deep from the top.”

  Secret messages passed far and wide in the cerulean deep.  Starfish murmured and mimed their meanings, and they dreamed of the sky where they were born.

  “I don’t think Father Cato likes me.”
  
  “Your cowl is sideways.” 

  William fixed Frederick’s cowl and then the two looked with knotted faces at the fuscous wavelets passing like uninterested pedestrians all around them. 

  At night stars dotted the skies as William and Frederick slept the sleep of forgotten men.  The starfish, dark orange in the night glow, surfaced like a thousand morose children to behold their homes, the sky whence they had fallen.  Together they sang in starfish tongue:

  Glory to the world of falling skies
  These sad shores are half of heaven
  If only we had landed there!
  Then we too could live as men

  They sank down as the men rose up.  It was still night but the clouds slowly thieved the sky as the slippery rocking of the boat rang bells of languishing rather than love in their hearts.

  “I’m hungry, William.  I’m cold too, but I’d be colder if I could eat.”

  “The Lord will provide.”
  
  “People who say God has a plan have never seen the darkness.”

  No one said anything.  Not the starfish below, the stars above, nor the men in their hearts.  The whole world was silent.

  The silence was folded neatly and placed within a box, solemnly buried deep within all the meanings of their thoughts.

  “You think people wonder where we’ve gone?”
  
  “I’ve always had a hunger for outer space.  To see something that was outside of everything.”

  ‘Never again’ are strong words; people paced their planet in fear of the inevitable.  Who wasn’t lost at sea?

  The starfish planted themselves on the ocean floor and twirled in patterns of hope.  The oval boat glided above them, swimming ignorantly through a land of infinite longing. 

  “One day,” Frederick began, speaking in a voice of daylit tears, “Francis brought a bag of barley up to the chapter house from the cellar.  I and others yelled at him for not bringing up the second one that was on the floor in the pantry.  But now I’m remembering clearer than ever before.  I was supposed to bring the second one up.”
  
  “I wish we could see further than our hearts.”

  They soul-hopped on islands through the night, the sea raised up towards a beckoning sky, full of stars they had finally begun to wish to be, and the horizon-chopped moon that seemed much too big and bright for their sin-grey eyes.   All the while the starfish crooned, a night of hopeful orphans.

  • 5:59 am
  • 3 Comments