THE HIDDEN TRACK

The following passages are dedicated to Leopold, to the vernacular, to certain evil women (you know who you are), to certain wonderful people(they know who they are), to soft afternoons and quiet Sunday evenings, to Fall and seeing your breath for the first time since Spring, and to Isabelle Ya Feng ... a soul slipped by like two ships passing in the still, moonlit sea.
-- Abraham Ahmed, the Surfing Beatnik



Collected and Accounted For...

Kneeling into the early sun-drenched sand and raising my arms to the horizon I screamed "TRANSLATION! PLEASE!" into the damp morning skyline confronting me.

I cringed and clasped my hands together and brought them to my chest tightly, forcefully. I bent my neck to one side and tilted my cheek upwards looking at the sky with one eye.

All muscles tensed...
All senses blurred...
All blood cells scattering from artery to artery, vein to vein.

My head rushed and my hands burned.I dropped my wrists to the sand and folded down over them in a bent fetal pose with back and bottom in the air. I laid my cheek on the sandy transition-line-of-land-to-sea-and-water-to-earth.

I analyzed all form of particle...

Kernels of rock...
Dots of crustation...
Minute shells unnoticed by eye at a walking height.

I recorded them all in my thoughts and I noted the longevity of each compared to the prompt decomposition of myself. I relaxed, smiled and laughed and clutch a handful of moist study in each of my hands. I pushed my face into the kernels and dots and shells and tasted the bitterness of their salt upon my lips.

I bowed my back and I raised my head.
I sat up and back with my knee folded under me.
I squeezed the sand mightily in my hands and allowed portions to spew from the gaps of my finders and the ends of my palms.

Again, I raised my arms to the sky and with eyes open hysterically I bellowed "YES I DO!"

Walking from the shore, sand now dusted and gone, I identified myself as a fast moving element of nature... born swiftly through time as gust descends over the grassy fields of yesterday.

I vowed never to die, only to fade away as suggested by a man of a stranger time.

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