The Doom of Sir Actaeon

I remember the sorrow that seemed to drain out of my body and run alongside the road. My body the car flowed through a liquid yellow track touched with black like a Witch’s cap. The sorrow that seemed to build in me was like someone pulling water out of a vase. The sunlight, decaying, slanted over the road to Montauk. I drove on and on.

I cut my door shut near the fork. On the side of the highway I stepped towards the beach with madness and pain in my eyes. I stepped over the railing. Snow stuck to the beach. Tiles of ice drifted far out into the waters of the bay.

My feet crunched the snow. The hem of my pants fell into the snowfall, which melted from my body heat. Crunch crunch feet forward across the snow. I came to the edge of the beach where the snowfall thinned.

Sheets of ice went out into the bay. Starred, they uplifted mounds of snow. The mounds of snow reminded me of the way meteors crash together in a collision of stars.

The sun continues to slope downwards, apricot ball lowering towards the mountains. Amber light slants over the bay. As the sun sets the sky fades from yellow to a deep shade of blue. And as the sun begins to slide under the horizon it paints a pale rainbow of colors upward. I watch the colors flux one into the other. The cold air stings my cheeks.

I no longer feel sorrowful. Winter’s decay of lights bleeds into my skin. Yellow, sinking, blue and shattered lights.

When I drove away the last glimmer of sunlight set over the hill. The air flashed mauve and for a moment the cars barreling past me froze on the highway.

I opened the car door, stepped out, and began to walk around. The salt from the road kicked about in the air. I put one of the stones to my chest in time.

The Lambskin Madman writes:

Marrow 9.4.18

September 1

-Belt Parkway 8/26

It was 8 o’clock when I stepped out of my home and into the night. Through the pine trees of the train tracks my eyes tracked the moonlight.

I walked out of the development; but it was not until I made it to the shady stretch of road adjacent to the park that I could observe the full light of the moon.

Leaning open the pages of my notebook, I craned my eyes to the moon. It shone above the darkened windows of the houses. Alone in deep blue night the amber splotches of the lamp and moon glowed.

My pen slowly crossed the paper: tonight Luna leaves her imprint—

As my pen neared the last two lines a car passed and in its wake a square of blue-silver light fell onto me. I felt the square illumine my body from night; someone’s eyesight in it reading me up and down, I continued to translate the moon.

As the last words slipped off of my pen I peered across the road. In the square of the window the light shining on me halved and faded like a receding wave. I stood in the original darkness of the spot once more.

I lifted my eyes back to the moon, looked down the sidewalk, and continued on my way.

August spiders have tied up the branches in webs of silk. The leaves and needles push over one another. Some show down-drooping crescents of green, others flat maple leaves with yellow veins; some with outspread blue-green needles, others with vines hooked like chili peppers and small bright green leaves. And in the lowest canopy the dead mops of rusty needles hang towards the ground.

Cicadas make their never ending music in the dark green places. In my ears the sound is unvaried, a constant flaring of sharp brown notes; but if I listen closer what is their whole? Is there music hidden I cannot yet hear? The cars on the road drive by sighing.

On the treetops, the setting sun paints the leaves. At the top, burnt leaves rust amidst leaves of green yellow. Where the shadows shade in the underleaves the leaves are dark green, blue green and green running over tiles of blue. In spaces between the outflayed branches patches of pale evening sky glow. And by strokes of the sunlight fading the leaves gradually turn darker shades of green.

Above all the breeze shows upon the leaves. They push upwards and down; the scions bend back and forth and stop. A larger breeze gusts over the small. The flats of the leaves, overlapping, push against one another rubbing veins. The same consistent shadows fall on the trunks, a mottling of shadows that runs down, disappearing into the back green spaces. Once more the wind blows over the hooked arms of the pine tree, which sway with a dreamy float in their branches, minutely rubbing the wind. Two doves have flown by hand in hand.

The tree in Northwood Court

The slender pole of the trunk, gray brown with white fingerprints, rises out of a crowd of black-eyed susans. The pole disappears amidst a cloud of celadon leaves. From base to apex the shady undersides of the leaves progressively brighten, with little streaks of red on the branches. The branches hook out from the trunk, in slender arms they hook out and up towards the sun. The branches spaced, the leaves seldom overlap. The lower leaves, stirred by a low breeze, bob up and down. Star shaped, they lift their left and right arms droop downwards while the bulk in their bodies puff up like hot air balloons. The topmost branch rises straight up amidst the bushier clumps, stirring on a gray cloud.

Head buried in the sky

I crane my neck into the pale blue. If my eyes could chisel the stone of the sky. White shreds of cotton drift slowly towards the bay. Beneath the white ply an airplane coasts along, with lights flashing on the tips of its wings, paint of the sun melting off the fuselage. And a humming bird, and a butterfly, bird and insect rhythm of wings swapped.

Opposite the sun and the pale blue darkens to a vivid teal. Upthrust on teal the leaves and needles rise. Under the sound of a low airplane crossing, phototropic green pigment rushes. A cloud, its edge covering part of the sun, darkens the lawn. A cool low breeze of later summer filters through the trees.

Indigo water

Blue silver ripples drift over the tops of the waves. Waves atop the waves the ripples of silver and blue spread apart, dissolve into a brown uplifting wave. Down the ripples drift, and cross one another like layers of clouds.

The water is indigo blue. From the plain of bay indigo waves, ribboning, lilt and drift to shore. Lifting rolling cuffs of blue they continue to drift in. But currents and ripples shift perpendicular to the baywaves’ thrust. Currents drift further out, into the blue black water of the center of the bay.

And shadows fallen from the wave’s dock pelt the water. The colorless forms rise up on each wave rolling in. And thrusts into the base of the dock, sending a flux of waters backward.

All of the bay is in blue motion. Pulling to shore, drifting further away, rebounding off the dock, all of the indigo water weaving a tapestry.

After she has gone the sun flits behind the clouds; the shadows change like a player’s hands running down the keys. A tan walkway leads from the shaded recess by the door to the purple driveway. On the flank of the house, in the shadow cast by its height, the gray box of the air conditioner waits to be turned on. The windows ascend the cream tile siding. At the base of the tree a stone figure crouches. It seems to peer outward.

One of Rose’s survivors pulls into the driveway in a maroon car. He waits inside the cabin a minute then slowly opens the door. He walks into the house, emptying of its belongings. The train cries, a drill from another house spins with its bit in the socket, cool wind flows out of the late summer air. They hit the side of the house and travel up the chimney. The chimney stack rises above the pine trees.

The wind in their branches, they sway through blue and green. Hisses out of the needles. A few thoughts drift in the wind, a gust sweeps over Rose’s house. Her name in the wind, she buffets all the soffits of her home. And the grass and the warping sunlight. And the shadows netting yellow leaves. And the flag drooping in our peripheral vision. And the glowing hot air rising from the cement. The crushed bits of stone Rose used to gambol over. But no more. In air. In air. Drifted away.

Beneath the planks the waters move in fast-changing ripples. A current of ripples pulse forward; counter, a current of ripples drift backwards. A blue grey green, the water in the marina moves against the boards of the pier.

Past the rail which looks out onto the bay, the waters glow with the sun. White and yellow fire shimmers off the wavelets, light spread across the open plain. Ascending, the sun moves beneath a thin mask of clouds. Its light burns through the clouds and knocks into the water of the bay.

Cool breezes descend from late summer day. They swoop over the morning bay and the boardwalk, tangling with the rigging of the boats. On the shoreline the waves continue to break over one another; overlapping, each break emits a sigh.

The planks of the boardwalk, weathered gray and stuck with green, feel soft underfoot. As one treads over these planks they neither creak nor moan. Copper nails rust in the wood, corroded by the air of the bay.

Tall black lamps, spaced every fifty feet, rise off of the boardwalk. Their empty metal cages fill up with the gathering sunlight of day. At night they shine above the waters, putting an amber glow into the waves.

Seagulls, floating dreamily into the empty sky, call to one another. Their yellow beaks open with their call.

Drifting and tugging, the waters move with vigor from the bay to the marina. As they enter the cove the waves flatten. The tall rough peaks flatten into a smooth water that the wind indents. Slowly the tides change, and the marina fills up with gray green bay.