Can Anything Good….

….come out of Africa?

Here I am — behold me, a Southern man in whom there is considerable guile. I spent the day walking beneath a haze, a film of wind-blown filth from the dark continent. The normally sparkling mountain air was impure, casting a mosquito net of dark, obscuring Saharan dust across my green mountains and valleys. When the spattering, sporadic showers came, they left muddy smudges on the sleek surfaces they coated. My eyes and nose seemed to sting a bit, and the world felt…hidden. What are those words with similar meanings?

Occult. Apocalypse.

Jinx and I walked by a neighbor’s fields, and three horses gamboled in the dim air. I watched the far treeline, almost expecting a fourth to join them, pale and burdened with the remorseless rider so many seem bent on enthroning. We returned home and Jinx’s bark summoned me outside to see a black snake descending from the Japanese maple out front like judgment and regret and superstitious fear rolled into a coil of solidified oil. The nearby cows have been calving, and their calls to their newborns sound like prophecies, like pronouncements, like great stones being moved.

The birds are motionless in the trees and along the fences. The summer sun is obscured, appearing greasy and unhealthy. It shines down on shells, moving to their own rhythms with faces as hidden as Apollo’s, comforted by the clanking of their familiar fetters, easy under their hemlock boughs, hostile to clear eyes and direct gazes. They are soaked in fear.

I am not afraid. It is already upon me. My task is simply to spin back against their own momentum and use their inertia against them. I cannot defeat them, but neither can I be defeated by them. Their rage will burn them up, and I can still laugh, and my laughter will strike the spark. It will be terrible and beautiful.

I am despised, and the knowledge rocks me like a lullaby. I will smile like a baby in my sleep. The clouds of dust have traveled from far away, and they are a wonder to many, but they do not frighten me. They obscure the light of the sun, but they do not overcome the sun.

This is a grand time to be breathing the air, no matter how it tastes. The grit in my mouth will be absorbed, but it will not harm me. I am thankful.  And my face is lifted, easily seen, never aimed down at the dirt.

Never aimed down.

~ S.K. Orr