...

You think of the air and its taste like ash, of the cotton folds, the loose tarmac.

You think, quietly, of winter and the prickling of skin, the flesh of geese.

You wave the iron flag, steady, arms raised up against the tide. Mourning gentle passing night, limbs bathed soon in warmth dance circles round the onrush gathering, grace in dying sonnet passing through untouched.

You think of all the world, wrapped up in the flesh of palms. The tips of fingers. The taste of lips. All the frenzied patterns glide nimble, kaleidoscopic, myriad and absent translation. You think of time unceasing, the symmetry of lust. The space along her neck, below her ears. The trails of atlas strawhair beckoning, the scream of youth in all her fury reckless.

You hear the growl of a thousand trains clamping their gears a mile away, stalled at sunrise in some grain-belt station, belching carbon and the opaque smoke of industry. You see the light of sun crawl slowly up from Hades, basking plains of flatland with the stormeye peace of pre-snow warmth. Dawn moves across the Earth unfettered, tied like kitestring to its harbor in the coming night.

Spat from the gullets of young crawls music from the nests of birds, leaping chromatic up the walls of buildings in a smattering of timbred scales, skiffed along paned glass and the dust of awnings, into caffeinated ears.