Sunday

"Men that had seen her drank deep and were silent."

Dominic drove in the evening light and wondered.

Was it Austin Clarke?

Those ten words had followed him through the guts of three decades, several relationships, an infinite number of rendez-vous. Impermanence, he had grasped, was the common thread.

DId it matter who had penned that exquisite line? Wasn't it the words, after all, that had mattered most, and not the mortal soul who had harboured them and then released?

And where had the poet harboured them? In his heart? In his head? His psyche? His Spirit-self? His pen? His pint?

His thoughts formed a circle and danced playfully around him.

To look this sort of thing up was the responsible thing to do. But to shine a light on words might prove fatal to their magic.

Why did this line carry the weight of gold within it, when not one word was in itself remarkable?

He turned off the road and parked near a forest clearing. It was almost dark. He wished to release the line, the way pigeons are released.

He wished to consider more pressing matters; his children, his missing dogs, his current predicament, but the words stayed on, uninvited, taunting Dominic as the wet leaves refused to crunch beneath his travelled feet.

This was both his curse and his gift. Beauty arrested him until madness released him. Beauty always waited - in a word, a smile, a shape. Some tangled combination always lurked to take him in - even the quiet held no silence.