Soulcarving 2000

Potential: road swelling through the cambered cradle below, through limbs into downhill feet resting, heels against asphalt; electric dust of dusk alive, anticipation suspending action; the hill is itself steep enough to impel its own completion, its base a disappointment even before pushoff, is itself an enactment of gravity--an expression of descent. The last line always strings out the same, always leads, rain running down a dry window; the last turn alive in the first and containing, remembering, the pressure of the first at its end. The reclining western sky removes detail and adds intensity, smoothing while brightening surface; the memory of last night's rain remains alive in both cedars and rolled concrete curbs redirecting the lime green serpents rocking below, still breathing the heat of the days sun in the blacktop. Some momentous compulsion incites the stone beast from its ageless sleep, uprooted feet grounded against silica crystal, as the force that had held it static itself frees it forward and down. Feet still, waiting,, gravity blooming manifest in pitch and friction voicing its approval in the plastic metallic tones particular to the occasion, the hill alive and rotating, downward force vectored into acceleration. The drop, the unmakeable made, the complicated simplified. Then the quiet walk home. Potential realized.