Riding on a dream half-forgotten, a twilight moment, fog on a summer evening, I got in my car and drove.

Thunderstorms rolled through the afternoon, layers of stormclouds packed against another, a fifteen minute ruckus, rays of sunshine shining through the downpour, crystalline refracting on my front window.

The road below the city stretches into a sloping plain before running again into a middle school and housing developments. A church. A barren stretch of road that leads to a foothill in the distance like the present to the future, unseen, distant.

The road was damp and the air held a wet crisp touch to it the way water droplets cling to skin when you step from the shower.

In the east, the storms inflate further, uncoiling, flex. A bead of water runs down the curve of your back.

The sky, fresh scrubbed and bare, clear from the north to the south, the west mountains to the line of violence in the east. Above the mountains more was brewing, but the sky behind reached further, encompassing, falling to black. At the crest of the mountains, a touch of faded blue, sandblasted with a touch of color, a purple unseen behind it all, a scene painted over, but bleeding through, a world as seen through despite no evidence. Yes, it goes from a cool hint of orange to a blue so rich it sprawls full, but when I happened upon the thought of purple,

Yes. That’s exactly what does it.

Like the artist mimicking the sunset, a paintbrush smear and a blend, whipped, color swirls until half chance half talent he strikes cold and steps away from the canvas, lost.

The air blew blue and cool through my open windows and in a moment I felt a part of the sky, alone on the ground, clear from edge to edge.

The ground deepened, black, something natural, a comfortable frown, the emotion of the nocturnal, another silhouette.

Passing a small pond, hardly a collection of water from storms passing and springtime melted runoff, persistent, settled into a home not its, but welcoming, and amidst the blackness surrounding, a vivid blue from above, inverted, mirrored, the sky below the ground in a split, a crack below, seen, broken open amidst the black, outstanding.

With the onset of the night (which always will touch the ground before it touches the sky, the mind before the heart), a darkness surrounding, as the earth cracks open polluted in the natural black, (immersed, I think, instead), only then does the sphere round out, a sky above and below both, a road through the two, a floating precipice, without gravity, clinging, moving forward staring at your shoes.

Let go, dive deep, and swim.

And right above, before the night strokes and pulls down the sky, a single white star overlooking it all, a counterpoint against the dark, inviting. As the drapes fall, a sheet over an unheeding fear, embracing tight against the cold, a lamp winks out, a nightlight on in the wall, a call for the windows of the world, illuminate.

and like a city of souls, as the inky black night crawls, stretches, descends,

smothers. FEAR. BE AFRAID GOD DAMMIT,

the stars come out, nestled, a peace felt at the gates. An old enemy recognized, a communication opened.

The stars and the night  sky are friends.

*

I broke for the side of the road and slapped on my 4-way flashers, rummaging madly for a notebook, a pen, and scribbling in the half-dark, as the night fell, my words invisible to all but my pen, the dream escaping as from the morning sun, running giggling into the forest, holding  hands,

Get it down on the paper now.

There’s meaning here, remember it while you can, cling tight before

the clouds close tight,

the city lights turn up,

the stars are masked,

lightning flickers in the west, above the dark peaks,

and again a chuckle comes from the underbrush outside your front window.