Dissolution

INTRODUCTION NOT SET YET

Attribution: Photo by Karel Drozda
from Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/misty-autumn-forest-with-mossy-rocks-33915885/

AURTHUR REYNOLDS to provide Audio. This is the audio for COLLEEN ANDERSON’s poem…

Dissolution

For 1000 days
James sat in a 6 x 6 cell (cubicle)
until the flicker and hum
of the yellow fluorescent lighting
made the trees of
the two-dimensional forest
shimmer and whisper
on invisible breezes.

On the 1001st day
James dragged himself
from the mire of ledgers, sums, and balances,
to walk to the edge of the painting,
and then he wandered farther in,
moving silently as a ghost
across the luxuriant carpeting of
rust-colored pine needles.

Sidling between Black Spruce
and moss-bedecked Poplars, James moved
down the slope towards the floor of the basin,
passing through waist-deep flame heather
like wading a sea of balmy conflagration,
while the fog gathered
in wisps and curls round his ankles
hiding his black leather oxfords.

Still, he pressed on deeper
into the gathering gloom
never looking back, always ahead,
always towards the distant clatter
of moving water reminiscent of temple bells,
even as the fog consumed his knees
and waist, further forward, passing banks
of Lace Ferns, each step emptier than the last.

He never expected to emerge again into light,
but as the fog thickened and swallowed his cheeks,
James became certain that,
in leaving behind gouts of numbers,
columns of entries, rows of figures,
there was nothing left below the mist,
nothing that was James,
and nothing that was not.

by Arthur Reynolds

BIO TO BE PROVIDED. This is Colleen Anderson’s bio… Award-winning author Colleen Anderson crafts curious collections: I Dreamed a World, The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, Weird Worlds, with Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins just released. Word curios can be found in Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance and others. She lives in Vancouver, BC, searching for mermaids. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com