An Elsewhere Scat.

Leaves scat across the track like jazz singers, the wind gusting as if it is notes from an improvisation, after midnight, in a small club in Manhattan.

Or Amsterdam.

Rain is waiting in the wings, maybe tomorrow.

Maybe tonight, as we sleep.

He walks on.

A young-deer, skits into the forest like a ballerina practicing on a small stage in Moscow.

Or Berlin.

He decides to follow.

Into the forest where silence hangs like forgotten Christmas decorations.

He stops.

He listens.

The wind returns, whistles and ebbs and flows and disappears into the valley below.

Leaving him to admire the baubles waiting in the branches.

Some silver.

Some gold.

They whisper to each other.

He tries to make sense of it, then remembers.

Stops trying.

And simply, Is.

 

Make Yeself at Home.

The first time I saw him was in a bar down by the docks; even if the place had been crowded he would still have caught my eye. 

He was tall and thin like a mast and with hair matted into lumps as if tossed and turned by stormy waves. 

His skin was the colour of the depths, yet dry and cracked as if it were made of shells or sand.

But it was his eyes that held me. Grey and empty like two portholes, yet wild like the sea itself.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” he asked, his voice echoing as if he was speaking from far inside a cave or from the belly of a mighty whale that had swallowed him whole.

I looked around the empty bar and the emptier chairs, it was still early and the fishing boats had not yet returned with their morning catch and thirsty crews......

another part of something else