If the Earth Begins to Wobble

This night sky has purpled at the edges and the stars have all begun to crawl away, dimming.  The half-moon has tangled to a solid stop in the thorns of a dead tree.

By day, the old man put down his last horse—the one he called Ginger.  Once, that mare saved his life.  Snake bite and a fast gallop to the fence-lands.  The irony now left only to this bruised and faltering night.

The eyes of a thing will always die last.  The final tear immobile at the rim of the socket as the iris slowly clouds through like a pool of water downstream from a muddy crossing.

He rode through a dream of hot needles while clinging to the mares golden mane on the day he lived.  Later, he married badly and planted his best seeds in dust.   

If the Earth begins to wobble now, to what shall the old man cling?   

--Mitchell Hegman