What If the Sky Froze?

As a child I had a hobby of making colonial newspapers.

Just inventing things that happened in colonial times,

and printing them, and handing them out to the neighbours.

I also had a hobby of trying to imagine things that had never happened in the history of the world.

For some reason, this was really important to me.

So I'd go out into the woods and make a fort,

and roll oak leaves into oak leaf cigarettes,

and crawl into the fort and smoke oak leaf cigarettes,

and think up various improbable events.

For example: a man is walking along a road,

and just as he looks up into the sky –

which is filled with dense swirling snow –

a duck flying above him has a heart attack and falls right on top of the man, and kills him.

Things like that.

Sometimes these thoughts would lead to questions,

like 'is it true that on Mars the cliffs are 40 miles high?'

Or 'what if everything just stopped?

The tides and the waves and – what if the sky froze?

What then?

'

To live in the gap, between the moment that is expiring,

and the one that is arising.

Luminous. And empty. The real city.

Falling through your mind in glittering pieces.

And when you close your eyes, what do you see?

Nothing. Now open them.