Philip Gross
The Cause
No loss reported. No departure not matched by arrival. No light aircraft missing in the hills. But that – did
The Cause
No loss reported. No departure not matched by arrival. No light aircraft missing in the hills. But that – did
you see that? – single graceful fluting of a propeller blade, like the twist of a fish on the current, its leap for a fly
when we saw it tumbling slowly in the rapids, briefly lodged, then levering itself over the slick boulder, then jerking away,
was the start of a quest, a day’s then weekends’ trudges upstream, to find the wreckage there must be
(you can’t believe the silence on the news, the general disbelieving) leaving us to forge on, possibly
forever, up into the headwaters, in the ever-widening fractal logic of them, numberlessness,
into quaking-grass bogs, their soundless swallowings of secrets, or the secret
that there might not be a secret. Already it has been forever, and we’ve only just begun.