The moon in daylight

The nostrils flared in the long face as it clipped another set of grass blades. The clearing was still, except for the beast's ambling gait and the chittering of a siskin in the pines. Far away in the hills, a breeze could be heard to swish through the boughs of the conifers. A beacon shone in the firmament and the land was bright. The dark eyes had glazed over in the face, and the dilation of the pupils could be seen through the ghost of a cataract. The animal moved its jaw and the clippings fell to the earth. It had not raised its head from the cropping position, and the small hairs around its lips tickled the hairs of the turf.

It moved without ambition, striking the soil in random patterns. Its inhalations outlasted their complements, a long sucking breath being followed by a tearing puff that vibrated the nasal cavity. Chords stood out in its legs and shoulders as it relied on one member at a time. Occasionally a defect in the terrain would repel the contour of its hoof and it would stagger off at a diagonal, halted only by the stiffness of its joints. Wild visions played and a fine aura surrounded all things. The animal simply could not focus, having stumbled into a purgatory between observation and consciousness. He suckled at the teat of his mother, who appeared from where he had lost her. He didn't remember how she had gone, or when, he only remembered a time when he was alone. Now he felt his own bulk again, and his haunted eyes took in the emptiness of the air around him. His discomfiture showed in the blinking of his eyelids as he tried to cope with his state.

The thread of time and of memory had snapped in his mind and there was nothing to inhibit him from repeating the cycle ad nauseam, becoming gradually comfortable in a vision from the past and unexpectedly groping for its fleeting trace as it vanished into his periphery. A farm girl was feeding him a sweet carrot, and his tongue was no longer dry. The saliva of ecstasy drizzled from his champing teeth and puddled on the earth, a golden coin in the sunlight. It was there, he had seen it when his eyes had roamed the ground for the spare carrot piece, the one the girl had dropped. He had closed his teeth on the morsel and pulled it into the moist cave of his mouth.


The tongue worked like sandpaper against the roof of the cave. He swallowed and felt an obstruction of rubbery mucus or tissue. A mountain lion screamed and he did not react. A cloud passed over the sun and the horse stumbled and fell.

Some flowers were missing from the thorn-apple.



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