The Pali,
that dark depository for all that passes through it.
Wind, wheels, energy,
psychic imprints left like tire marks on the periphery.
The forgotten past straddles median lines with the present,
relapsing in the flash of headlights
like the sudden reflection of moonlight across the eyes,
mysterious pools beneath a canopy’s disguise.
The light finds its way through coils and folds,
illuminating those trapped in banyan choke holds.
It is calculating, seizing hosts, sinister in time.
Simultaneously, it is the substance to the darkness
where the spirit descends,
intermediary for this marriage that depends
on the synchronicity of strangers
thrust into one another by seed or by accident,
punctuated by a rain that stirs up
all that lay dormant in dark contours.
The road follows its bends,
unravelling thoughts that never end,
sucked into tunnels, a gaping mouth
that funnels the fear
from one generation to the next,
born out of these corners, legends endure.
Over windward’s steep ravine,
some took the curve too sharply,
dead teens in careening trajedy
comingle in red clay.
With no shoulder to lean
over this auto graveyard,
flashlights will gleam off derelict fenders
and last screams linger over the screetch of brakes.
This pain re-awakes in those who suffer in silence
while wind accentuates the absence.
deeper into that forest of loss,
older passages trail off to no answer.
Wind, an instrument for a troubled mind,
sets in motion the swaying vines,
caressing wet air, dangling hair
descending from cool heights where
a mist would appear, is it more than it seems?
Does it backdrop the myth, will it penetrate dreams?
The Pali leaves you stranded again,
tricking you with voices and visions,
so you place alms in the crux of stones for fallen victims,
offer empathy, lest we disturb what is underneath,
skulls the highway keeps,
tunnels cursed to know the interior of burial caves.
How many workers unfortunate to find shallow graves,
tie Ti leaves to truck beds before driving it again?
That endless loop wound tightly to the mountain’s circumference,
straddling that extraordinary line
between the material and the spirit,
darkness and the divine.
The Pali, a psychological barrier,
intermediary for whatever you bring over.
yakskinpocketnotes 