Steep and rocky now. . . . The wind tugs at my cloak. . . . Up. . . . Up to where the rocks are streaked with silver and the trees have drawn their line. . . . The grasses, green fires, die down in the rain. . . . Up, to the craggy, sparkling, rain-washed heights, where the clouds rush and boil like a mud-gorged river at flood crest. . . . The rain stings like buckshot and the wind clears its throat to sing. . . . We rise and rise and the crest comes into view, like the head of a startled bull, horns guarding the trail. . . . Lightnings twist about their tips, dance between them. . . . The smell of ozone as we reach that place and rush on through, the rain suddenly blocked, the wind shunted away. . . .
Emerging on the farther side. . . . There is no rain, the air is still, the sky smoothed and darkened to a proper star-filled black. . . . Meteors cut and burn, cut and burn, cauterizing to afterimage scars, fading, fading. . . . Moons, cast like a handful of coins. . . . Three bright dimes, a dull quarter, a pair of pennies, one of them tarnished and scarred. . . . Down then, that long, winding way. . . . Hoof clops clear and metallic in the night air. . . . Somewhere, a catlike cough. . . . A dark shape crossing a lesser moon, ragged and swift. . . .
Downward. . . . The land drops away at either hand. . . . Darkness below. . . . Moving along the top of an infinitely high, curved wall, the way itself bright with moonlight. . . . The trail buckles, folds, grows transparent. . . . Soon it drifts, gauzy, filamentous, stars beneath as well as above. . . . Stars below on either side. . . . There is no land. . . . There is only the night, night and the thin, translucent trail I had to try to ride, to learn how it felt, against some future use. . . .
It is absolutely silent now, and the illusion of slowness attaches to every movement. . . . Shortly, the trail falls away, and we move as if swimming underwater at some enormous depth, the stars bright fish. . . . It is freedom, it is the power of the hellride that brings an elation, like yet unlike the recklessness that sometimes comes in battle, the boldness of a risky feat well learned, the rush of rightness following the finding of the poem’s proper word. . . . It is these and the prospect itself, riding, riding, riding, from nowhere to nowhere perhaps, across and among the minerals and fires of the void, free of earth and air and water. . . .
We race a great meteor, we touch upon its bulk. . . . Speeding across its pitted surface, down, around, then up again. . . . It stretches into a great plain, it lightens, it yellows. . . .
It is sand, sand now beneath our movement. . . . The stars fade out as the darkness is diluted to a morning full of sunrise. . . . Swaths of shade ahead, desert trees within them. . . . Ride for the dark. . . . Crashing through. . . . Bright birds burst forth, complain, resettle. . . .
Among the thickening trees. . . . Darker the ground, narrower the way. . . . Palm fronds shrink to hand size, barks darken. . . . A twist to the right, a widening of the way. . . . Our hoofs striking sparks from cobblestones. . . . The lane enlarges, becomes a tree-lined street. . . . Tiny row houses flash by. . . . Bright shutters, marble steps, painted screens, set back beyond flagged walks. . . . Passing, a horse-drawn cart, loaded with fresh vegetables. . . . Human pedestrians turning to stare. . . . A small buzz of voices. . . .
On. . . . Passing beneath a bridge. . . . Coursing the stream till it widens to river, taking it down to the sea….