“Begin their mutual arising;
as they breathed so too grew the trees;
so too the sun spoke
in exhales of their increscent breaths…”
The Girl floats
done-this-my-whole-life-smoothly
and shouts across the water at Zero,
“No matter how deep this gets, ya’know,
it’s just more of the same. Same. Same.”
From cross legged
on the shore,
like the tail
end of inertia,
Zero jumps.
“Just keep looking,”
he jubilates,
“only nothing can stay
the same for very long.”
Zero and The Girl stretched
their methods upon the bank,
within the dust
encrusted over shoreline.
The wake distending
broken upon the mosses;
a provocation of eddies.
Zero watched high
about the trees when red
beaked against the leaves
snapping up bugs, crickets
the size of chimneys, dipping,
driven to beak-dive, the bird
plummets to pluck polliwogs
and froglets from beyond
just the shoreline
in perspired pockets of pond water
squishing between Zeros toes
the brash bird lands,
and bends in for the nibbling…
“Hey!” cried Zero,
“try bittin’ your
own toes! See
how it feels!”
Cro nipped a final
peck against Zeros
knuckles and hopped
to toss some
lift across his ankles
squawked
and propped himself
from shoulder, to head, to
shoulder.
Across the rocks
The Girl postured
the flattened billow
of her fist
cocked back
suspended above her head she yells,
“Do I strike?!”
But slick like a joke
she’s back underwater.
All fists flailing and kicking currents
now bobbing
just chin deep and she yells,
“I got em!”
She spins her inevitably
soaking sibilants
and spits,
“That’s what it gets for messing with us!”
-...Running From Zero...+ 