mane of consciousness

October and its tar-clad lions drive a chariot of cornstalks and birch limbs with pumpkin wheels and tall wild torches burning eyes and streaked locks of mane through the night.
You stand aimless in a dark lane dark like an underwater cave. And suddenly in the blurry, fuzzy, all consuming blackness there glitters the vehicle and her minions -time drawn by her burning clocks.
These torches roaring toward you faster and faster, brighter and hotter and so huge the tinder of your lungs flares up like newspaper curling and frying with scream after scream composed of dust storms and dry heat and bleached bones whiter than the cotton filament of pain, the smitten heart of lightening, the unfaithful, blind eye of the candle.
And then, just as sudden as it came upon us, the chariot draws on.
The pressure, the heat, the fear of death bigger than any chasm in the tender, foolish earthen skin, leaves off, and the absence of it is almost more than a body can bear.

The lane is dark and silent, and relentlessly empty.

What comes after is a kindness of nature.
The pity of soft, warm rain to rinse upturned cheeks and wrecked, cracked eyes.
A hoarse sigh through peeling lips and the moment of desperate panic is passed for now. One returns completely to the present, to the body and its myriad levels of destruction.
A glass of water like a dream and a promise.

In the aftermath, there is preparation, and the nights grow so long they stain the days with their coal dust skies. The rain does not let up, and it becomes the solace of routine. One begins to carry an umbrella, forgets why the sky was welcome to crash down on one's head long ago. The solemn songs of the encroaching cold call from steeple to weathervane, garret to gable, and yet there is some forgiveness still. There is a little longer to stand in the veiled night and examine the moon.