The Story Of Movement Is Slow The Clouds Sang
I looked at clouds for hours, waiting for their stories to enter my ears, if I didn't move my
neck the clouds told their stories, they drifted by like kites and slow ocean swells, there is an
ocean in the sky and in the sea, the sun grew the clouds like sea meadow grass, the wind blew
them like strands of hair, the cloud-strewn seaweed along the shoreline of the sky, the sun
grew the clouds and the wind, it turned the wind cold and warm, the sun grew the hot desert
gibbers to breaking point, the stones cooked like onions along the frypan of the clay, "tell me
your stories," my heart said, "I am waiting like a stone," one bird looked down, had noticed
me as part of the place, "the story of movement is slow," the clouds sang, "the story of time
is eternal, the story of nature is cyclic," this is the story of the day and the night, the story of
birds that flock and skip along the ocean horizon like a black rope turning into a cup, the
aviators who catch the insects up, their eyes like nets that see fish through the surface of the
sea, the sun grows the fish, it grows the birds' beaks and eyes, it grows the fish fat beneath
the surface with a heart of fear, I said to him, "the animals move about each other, it's all
about slow consumption, they move slowly over and under each other, suddenly one of the
animals just eats another one, and the one that is being eaten doesn't seem to care, like it
gives itself up to be eaten, that it knew its place on the earth was as an animal to be eaten,
in the same way that the eater knew it must eat, we are the eater and the eaten, moving in
and out of each other's throats like long ropes, the lengths of intestines all inside out, pulling
in and out of each other", "I know," he said, "it's frightening", he understood that many are
frightened, all the little fish along the coral reef are frightened, their eyes are designed for
plankton and predators, their gills are for daring attempts and hiding spots, go forward and
retreat go forward and retreat, flick your bright spot and tail on a current and that is it, their
eyes are for food and the food they will be, the beach we stand on waits for us to be food and
will feed us if we're clever, it will harvest us after it has been harvested by us, the earth told
me its long stories, as long as a sun reaching its light around the circumference, the earth's
light is not like a city light, the small pockets of electricity that cling to the rupture between
sea and coast, "the earth's light is greater than that", I was sitting in a parked car alone and
crazy in the winter, I thought the sun set down the street like a tail light, the moon is the still
lamp, but the story was bigger, and slower and cyclic, my eyes were the car windscreen
interpreting the cinema of the world through glass, yet nature was just around the corner, it's
like you can be in swanston street, a city office or the peak hour traffic, whilst along the
beach the clouds are trailing their moisture like slugs, sometimes they have the whole world
on their backs like snails, then they are birds, soaring up before the sunset, or fleeing the
night so they don't go down with sunset past the ocean, who would know that half an hour
from melbourne the birds sent songs along the waves?, the politicians would not come here
today, many wouldn't come here until retirement or on a special occasion to the beachside
restaurant, they think they know what is to be found, yatch clubs, ice cream, balloons and a
bit of sun, wind and sand and all for us, our little playground, suddenly the flocks are my
neighbours, the tiny bird with the fish asphyxiating in her beak works on her death beside me,
we are all moving through each other, my dogs pant at the sea's edge, tremble at the fleshy
albatross and lick up the ocean, I will not eat nor abandon them and nothing else will, we all
have our protectors, the city people are going home to the television as the birds go home to
the city trees, the wind goes home to the night after sundown, let us be the clouds who roll
away laughing, they are free, they have asked me to follow them into the sky for my stories. |
