Nothing Here Is Dead

Nothing Here Is Dead

It was an early morning in late September and the monuments were waiting for the first blush of dawn.

I intended to visit a friend there but had brought my camera to shoot the rising sun.

I drove up a thin black ribbon past ancient stones and gnarled giants to greet the amber glow from the crest of a mighty hill.

The trees there were all fat and happy, their crooked roots sunk hungrily into the silent, sleepy tombs.

I hadn’t been well (and neither had the world) but I felt a certain vigor returning and the morning air resurrected me.

Unfortunately, I had been away too long and I could no longer locate his headstone.

It was just a small plaque anyway. So insignificant and unobtrusive. So unlike him when alive.

I laughed at the comparison.

The last time I visited I had brought his ghost a beer and some cigarettes.

A lot had changed since then and I was no longer a person he would recognize.

Of course, he would always be beautiful. And 27.

Had it really been so long?

Though the dead may rest there, there was so much life in that place. It was a green explosion, even with the new yellows of Fall’s intimation burning at the edges.

I passed a great old oak sporting an early burst of mistletoe.

It made me think of the god Balder and how the pretty, yet parasitic plant, had been used by Loki to kill the god of joy, a being loved by all. Oh how the nine worlds had wept when he passed away!

I told myself stories then about my fallen friend as the lens poured light from an ancient star into my insignificant little head.

Then I remembered that all of this is made of an endless fire.

Ashes are memories, I thought, but that flame lives on.

I was painting with light that morning while the light was painting me.

Nothing here is dead, I thought.

I packed my gear and drove home.

I smiled, because my friend rode with me, nestled warmly in my heart and sprouting from my head like little white berries in a golden hour.

©️ JM Tiffany 3/31/2024

Red Bones

In my vision I flew as I fell and rode a great gray wolf through a vortex of smoldering antlers. My beast steered my thoughts until, like water in milk, we merged and became a singular ghost rushing like wind through the dreaming wilds. I was drawn to a sullen sound and at once saw a young boy’s skull hanging from ghastly strings. There was a mournful chanting nearby, a soft feminine voice that sang wordlessly in the night. I found its source: a young girl who was rinsing her ruddy hands in a starlit pool. She was bare, save for a wooden mask, its brow carved with a pale moon. Nearby, amid the vines and briarwood, a black bear lurked, but the girl showed no signs of concern. I saw then eight arrows of yew, each with a glinting green obsidian point, arranged like the spokes of a wheel on the ground. I looked again at the boy’s skull and saw that it hung amidst his red, excarnated bones. A gentle breeze rocked his remains in the gnarled tree, each bloody bit bound there by his own sinews to its misshapen branches. It seemed to me that he sprouted like macabre fruits from the sleeping, twisted limbs. His luminous flesh caught the light of the full moon and glowed dully in the darkness as the masked girl began toiling to stretch it tightly over a simple wooden rack. With her hands, she caressed his lovely ruin, and smeared the taught flesh with the boy’s own brains. This she did to tan and preserve his hide, but also to work his memories into the skin. “I will wear you in the Spring,” she lamented, “and you will rise again as the Sun.” I think that she wept beneath her mask, though its rough wooden visage was unchanging and stern. When she resumed her singing, I heard the rough sound of ursine breath behind me. As snow began to fall, I opened my eyes. © JM Tiffany 1.2.2024

Disremembered

I lay with the lights off and whisper to the Night. “I feel sympathy for monsters,” I say to Her, “Because I know what has made them.” My wounds are invisible in Her darkness, but the cuts and contusions are everywhere. Little valleys and hills, amid coarse patches of lethargy. “Must those broken continue to break?" I cry. She is quiet. The Night is a good listener, yet she never offers me any advice. I bind the cracks with chemicals and sink away, slipping into Her belly to be disremembered until dawn. © JM Tiffany 3.18.2024

Thunder

I lived in the thunder of white cracks in a broken sky. Its shattering gray and violent breath strained my wings, streaking my soul with bitter rain, until I saw through the eye of the storm a heart that could not love me.

©️ JM Tiffany

In Silent Depths

The way was steep, descending in tight shafts through sedimentary layers into the pulse-haunted quietude of dark spaces below. I hammered my anchors and tested the protection before rappelling deeper. As the rope spiraled away like a thin snake into the aphotic throat of silence, I lowered myself down. My lantern glowed amber, creating a thin blister of light around me that swayed with each movement. Precariously, I dropped further into the depths. I was squeezed through a maze of tunnels, down broad fissures, and out of claustrophobic cracks into wet chambers. Limestone, gypsum, and dolomite took strange liquous forms, carved as they were by the slow flow of water over time. Occasionally, when I raised my lantern, strange fossils and ancient relics would cast worrisome shadows amid the looming stalactites and stalagmites. As my footfalls echoed into the shadowed stillness the warm glow of my little lantern was my dearest companion. In a place that dark and isolated, time passes differently. Without the Sun and Moon to pull one through their days, time vanishes into a permanent Night in which the only stars are phosphene flashes in the optic nerve, the false lights of the so-called “Prisoner’s Cinema”. But I was no captive here. I had come in search of something. Something lost. Something precious. After several cycles of resting and moving (what day was it?) I reached at last a vast chamber hollowed out long ago by heat and pressure into a natural cathedral. My lantern sent waves of light shimmering through a sea of dancing refraction. I shivered in the vaulted womb and listened to the sound of my breath. Eventually, I found it: a low mound of dirt on a bald island in the center of the prismatic chamber.

Though tired and sore, my heart fluttered in anticipation. I set down my pack, adjusted my lantern, and set to work with my shovel. How long I labored there in that crystalline abyss I cannot say. My face dripped sweat and strained muscles weakened as exhaustion set in. On I went, giving myself fully to the task, until at last I uncovered a feminine form beneath the moist soil of that secret place. I was struck with a sudden fear, and for a moment, I was frozen. I could hear the subtle sound of slow moving-water as I set to using my hands to clear away the dirt. It was then that I saw her face. How long had she lain there? Gingerly, I wiped the mud from her eyes, my hands gently clearing the muck from her cheeks and brow. When she opened her eyes I saw myself in them, and taking her into my arms, we wept. When at last she would emerge into sunlight, it would be without me. My body slid neatly into the impression. As I lay motionless in the mucky indentation, I closed my eyes. “I love you,” I said. “I know,” she spoke softly. I smiled as I felt each shovelful of earth add its weight upon my body. It was strangely comforting. Finally, I could rest. I closed my eyes and dreamt of her. © JM Tiffany 2024

Time

The heart goes tick-tock with the clock, and time is running out, ticking out gray strands of tangled numbers.

Time closes your eyes and wakes you with a scream, ticking on down the old man’s stream.

Time has no time to love, my dear. Time does not love you. She creases and she wrinkles. Her cold kisses put spiders in your veins.

She boxes up our memories and takes away the days, stealing away the sighs we used to breathe with ease.

She’ll drip the dreams right out of your head!

Hear me, I know! I used to be young! I wore the hats of children and played with tiny hands.

No, Time does not love you, my dear. I know time, and there’s no time like the present you give me. But Time, she will take that too.

She creeps and she crawls too slow to see, but she’s quicker than me, my love, quicker than me.

I’ve stolen from her, and she’s found me out, counting out my days in rays of gray and white.

Time takes you away and never brings you back.

The mirror tells the story. One day, the leaves will fall, and time will teach us all the secrets of the dirt.

No, time does not love you, my dear. But I do love you, in time; until the time is up; until my time is gone; until i am a picture, or a poem, or a phrase.

Though time may not remember, I was with you all those days.

©️ JM Tiffany