The horse faces forward in a deep hour. Silent and attentive, it wears a ghostly mask that doesn’t hide the weary world of its gaze. The rider looks aside, all dreams fallen from those eyes. Darkness is their prism. On this side of the pale, we recognize who sits in the saddle. And we aren’t […]
Emptiness Visible
Higher atmospheres veil the coming night in vaporous blues and dusty indigo. Frail stars and celestial bodies leak through the fading light. By the time the sun has settled atop a grass stem too thin to carry anything else, the incredible depths of the sky open. Our galaxy tilts above the faint furnace-glow of sunset. […]
Stylophoran
While playing Poohsticks, they spotted the hideous thing in the water. Meemur saw it first, during their third upstream drop. Four-year-old Ru Shi didn’t notice and rushed to the downstream side of the bridge to see whose Poohstick won the race. The anthroid stood unmoving at the rail. It watched the odd creature skimming over […]
A Certain Slant of Light
Why does the straw look broken in the water? Because light moves slower in water. Why? The scattering of photons off water molecules isn’t the reason. Photons are very small and almost all of them zip right through the water without ever meeting a water molecule. The actual reason connects us with the reality of […]
Dreamsprung Avalon
The moon in a day sky kites above orchard lawns and rolling hills. I forget who I was before. Among crooked lanes of gnarled apple trees, breezes wend their wild ways. I listen deeper and hear far off the dirge of the sea. Realer than real, a white elk – wearing a crown! – steps […]
Better Call Sol
3,350 years ago in ancient Egypt, the pharaoh Akhenaten, husband of Nefertiti, discarded the traditional pantheon of his culture and adopted the worship of Aten, the disc of the Sun. This monotheistic reverence for the solar deity lasted only a short while. After the demise of Akhenaten, Egypt’s traditional polytheism reasserted itself. What was that […]