The air is stressed.
Rain plucks against the tension discordantly.
Laborers 36-grit rough with
soaking tempers untempered
wait for a spark.
The fire is drenched in logs that will never burn.
Days of downpour drown the thought of flame.
One ancient still wed to tobacco,
one of many bygone lovers,
pulls out a damp cigarette and lighter.
No one would know.
A moonless night, a skyless night.
Unseen clouds are the only canopy in this wilderness,
darkness the only blanket,
a suffocating woolen weight.
Sound itself is dampened under it.
In an instant, white-hot flint showers across a gnarled hand.
Worn faces, downturned against the torrent,
flare into and out of this ghostly world.
Another light lasts only seconds longer,
illumes only one weathered face
behind the shades of another hand.
But a matte orange spot
all falls back to black,
whence the spirits came,
where our spirits return,
relegated to oblivion.