Animal

Picking my way across a darkened hollow, tenderly following a narrow path, I see him: far up and to my left, shadow upon shadow, a tense profile outlined against the stars.  More animal than man, he pants with fury, spent by rage; then pauses.  I follow his blackened gaze.  From the opposing crest of a moonstruck hill, she is watching him--has been following his every move--hears him howl with shame, and wounded pride.  Their eyes meet in crystallized violence; his gaze shatters first, and with a snarl he disappears behind the hill.

I have been holding my breath.  I draw a shaky slip of air and look back; she remains, bright and pained astride the far ridge.  Faintly I hear him crashing away through the branches and the bracken, a fading cacophony.

Time dilates beneath wheeling stars: years slip past like days within my hollow.  I see him return; I hear the mumbled apologies; I watch the man-beast stumble among the trees.  Some nights there is peace beneath our galaxy.  Some nights he screams, raising his beast's fist against heaven.  I cling to my short path; the hollow's stream swells and dries, swells and dries, in seasonal repetition.  His voice rings out across the valley--sometimes in fury, sometimes in desperate sorrow.  He screeches of mercy; disclaims her; weeping, begs her forgiveness.

Yet she is a statue, the only frame unmoved by centuries.  The hills themselves shift shapes and settle into place, time-smoothed in their edges and their slopes; in answer, my hollow deepens, pulled by the movement of its streams.  Now deep within this newborn valley, I crane my neck to see her remain, a granite fortitude.

Who can believe her now?  The stars slow; he is old.  His bright fury has dulled to bitterness, resentment, exhausted rage.  His yellow nails still scratch the dirt and his eyes shift nervously, senses alert to forest dangers.  Animal.  Within me, a parade of mounting doubts crash through my silent observation.  She will not really save him.  She is not even real.  She is a stone, an imagined thing.  He will perish--thus.  Crippled mortal, with yellowed lungs, his untamed hair thin and weak, his wild gaze dim and unintelligent.  Animal.  His bones will disintegrate before her--an unflinching stone.

Then steadily within the valley walls I hear her different voice ascend.  She asks me how I learned to measure all his damning sins; how it is I separate the animals from man.  Despite his pride and wild rage, he grieves his sins, she says--but why?  And then demands of me--"Whose voice am I?"

Now from her moonlit perch she moves, shaking off a thousand years to claim such vivid heights I cannot help but see her.  I cannot look away.  He sees her too; she fills our view; somehow not with size but sheer necessity.

"I am the ancient, eternal flame," she simply states: "unchanged, and every morning new.  I am dark clouds of terror, beautiful and fierce; deadly holiness; all time's power narrowed to a moment's pierce.  Yet I would breathe to you of grace and love--redemption in my patience and my pain.  So then, I ask again--Whose voice am I?  And who are you to hear?"

All this in silence; heard deep within.  Rustling, I find I am the animal-man; we are the same; so pierced are we with her holy claim.  Without answer, without a name, I hang our heads in shameful frames.

Then a gentle touch, her hand upon the skin of my rough-hewn face.  She breathes of grace; of love--a glimpse.  I know that I shall find myself the animal again.  But now, hope-pierced, I watch his course upon the hill and wait with silent joy.




March 2019