“Foxgloves were never meant
to keep them warm,”
said Sharkboot,
from the investigative branch;
"It eats the far face
of the wind," said Bones,
tugging
at the curling slunt;
shackles groaned
as another pen fell
into the pile
which had grown
beside the ream.
"It'll be three
before we're over."
It was Jimmy Cascade
making what little grants
he could;
amounts mattered to him,
the rest of the team
had long stopped
counting.
"After's better'n before,"
said Sharkboot.
Jimmy didn't care.
Moons were a thing
of the past,
a lost shimmering
on a lake hardened
to crystal
by Thumbnose.
The slightest give
on the surface
would have seemed
like falling;
rigid, hard and
unforgiving
were colors now;
tones, too,
and the brindle
men no longer
remembered.
"To sway,"
had said the poet.
But the command
came swiftly, "To sway
will dearly destroy."
Rigid the command.
Sway was brought
before the law,
the poet
was put to sleep.
Deep below the ream,
too deep to wander,
the mistling miner
found traces
of Carlisle so brilliant
it turned all grief
to brood;
down there
below reminiscence
with no room
to turn
or return,
hope was reborn;
Carlisle was the only thing
that could save them.
Squeakdoor turned to Thumbnose.
"There is a lot
of intimation left,"
he chided.
"What you have done
will not last."
Scientifically, Carlisle
initiated the brindle
and left freedom for sway,
and Jimmy knew it,
but he had been constricted
with direction,
afraid to sway,
to float free, and now
he only grew deeper.
"You can't figure it,"
cried his teammates.
Beside the ream, squints
grew into grimace,
not gradually, but
suddenly, tearing
at the fabric of the brindle;
Jimmy was left to
ponder his dilemma
alone; the odds
were too great:
Carlisle had been forgotten.
Jimmy was afraid he
would be forgotten, too.
One after another
the miners
walked to the edge
of the ream
and tore small corners,
hurling them away.
Jimmy heard the rustling
above him; before
the confetti would have
fallen like makeshift snow,
caught with the
hand, but now
corners disappeared
around thoughts
and words
were in jeopardy.
Jimmy felt helpless.
Choices grew fewer
and fewer, until
there was only the
words below him
in the Carlisle
which he placed above,
one at a time,
the next appearing then,
lower, matchless,
it might have felt
like falling,
but he had never fallen, and
everything was
rigid and fixed
and the displacement
was slow.
Offered the perspective
of time, Jimmy
would have seen the dip,
the softness, the shimmering:
the movement like dancing
or waves, his brave act
of placing Carlisle
above him,
between himself
and an insensitive world,
one small beam
at a time,
worthwhile.
Thumbnose begat crystal,
and crystal begat the hardness,
the hardness determined,
erective, budgless;
but Squeakdoor
intimated sway,
and slowly
dip broke into the
rigid, and straight
sagged, and ripple
was born.
Ripple begat shimmer
and shimmer reminded
men of the Carlisle;
but boundaries
were never given
to Carlisle,
for in the land
of the Slunt,
Carlisle is not discernible.
