A fire burns in the hearth. It is night, and the sky is clear. The air is cold; the stars are bright; The birches are leafless; The ground is soft and rolling Beneath a foot of new-fallen snow.
A man’s wet leather shoes, Creased and furrowed with age, Steam upon the stone hearth. Near them, lying flat, are his wool socks, Testaments to time outdoors. By the socks are two feet, One crossed over the other, Soles to the flame. Dry blue jeans and a plaid Wool shirt cover him. His eyes gaze into the fire. The house is otherwise dark.
The stabled horses’ breath rises in the dark. The old barn smells of oiled rope and hay. Nickering, the young bay stamps her feet, Then sidles nearer to the old palomino.
In a clearing in the middle of the yard Stands an ancient sugar maple. Ice glazes Its branches. When the morning Sun comes, the tree will gleam and seem to shine. It is an enormous tree, one estimated To be two hundred years older than the Hundred year old house. Like a cosmic phenomenon, The tree draws things to it: Birds, Squirrels, horses, dogs, and people.
Now a great-horned owl leaps From the tree’s branches. It flaps once, twice, thrice, Then glides nearly a quarter mile. The owl flies over the hoary mist That floats above the frozen creek. Then the owl is gone, Disappearing into the pine forest that lies Deep and cold and still, Where in many minds Mystery, horror, and romance Still thrive in winter.
This is an Arizona bark scorpion that I found on the wall of my bathroom in Mexico on the night of March 14th, 2019. They are the most poisonous scorpions in Mexico. In this photo, it appears to be a shadow. It’s not.
The hollow man and the zealot lay skylighting the vast desert on their stomachs
watching for anything mobile and columnular, squinting into the waves of heat
and the low hellfire sun which dipped crepuscular like a ball of blood.
Above the crest of the world the sun hung suspended, huge and balanced,
and the men fell in to watching it as if towed by a riptide into Andromeda and Ursula seas.
It set in a neon cataclysm, banded the faroff mesas, until all else became parentheticals and mud.
When the moon came out, it came out vanilla and strong
like the sunless flowering of night blooming jasmine
while from the distance rode a backlit man not deadtired nor horseworn before the floating circle
and the hollow man whose diction was three parts doggerel, whiskey, and graveyardsong
rasped smokily I tell thee wait; I have the time, the time.
He slid from under his belly a heavy revolver and spinning its cylinder made ready to kill.
Can’t hardly wait whispered the zealot who like all unwise men was mercurial
and who braided with such characteristic the strains of violence, insecurity, and assumption
and so saying he ran his hand through his short black hair as was his habit
and tendered the necklace of bleached doe’s teeth he wore for motives superstitious and bestial.
At a canter the rider lifted off his hat in that lonesome waste and the zealot spat in derision.
Hush hush hush! rasped his companion Hold your nerves and spit!
The rider came along across the shale, through the dwarf scrog and a crowd of desert bats
looking like some classical and celestial organism astride his white horse.
He wore a bandolier braced with bullets, pistols in his belt, a rifle across his back,
rode with the drumming energy of a raw heart while wondrousstar-staring as if the Leonids were at that
moment showering. He rode as if nothing lay or had ever lain in his course.
He rode as if, if he chose, he could empower a man to paint his godless world black.
The hollow man lay his thumb on the hammer of the revolver, cocking till it clicked and held.
He sighted along the barrel; just after he pulled the trigger the man popped crazy off his horse
and the hollow man seeing such sight rose and fired again and the horse fell
and so seeing turned his back and walked from that deathquilt without looking to see its pattern.
The zealot rose fingering his toothy necklace giggling at such dreadnought wanton force
then followed the hollow man, vanishing deep into the cobalt lit mesas and scrub chaparral.
The zealot and the hollow man sat sitting round a fire surrounded by soaring mountains
and near them sagged a dilapidated church, a steepled shack, with three rotten wooden steps
and inside: bare rafters termite ridden floorboards and a baptismal font of rose porphyry
carried by the zealot’s jackass through the metamorphosed and steep passes of the mountains,
and the hollow man sung singing, All the wicked man’s foibles and vile contretemps
the wicked man’s sins, the wicked man’s deeds, I make for free. I make for free. I have for thee.
And without a warning, the hollow man pulled from his holster his revolver and, aiming it at the zealot,
fired the gun six times in lethargic lethal succession and when the zealot dropped dead
the hollow man emptied the cylinder, refilled it with bullets, and left the fire burning,
for at his core he was empty, not full of hate, nor vengeance, nor malice, nor rot,
but full of no emotion, neither melancholic nor apathetic, just a husk of humanity in dread
shape with only a penchant for the spoken word and any skeletal song he might be heard to sing.
