His Ambulations

On shanks’ mare Argyle talked to himself. Alone, he’d carry on whole colloquies en route to some poor corpse’s obsequies— these dialogues, the way he kept his wits about him, body and soul together, fit for the wretched work of sin-eating. Sometimes he counted words or parts of words as if they amounted to something more than sound and sense attuned between his ears, as, for example, how coincident: the way grace and gratis, wherefore gratitude partook a kinship such as cousins do, singing the same tune in different voices, much as grave and gravitas, then gravity kept one earthbound, grounded, humble as the mud— the humus, so-called, God wrought humans from. Or how from Adam’s rib was fashioned Eve— bone of his own bone, flesh of his flesh— whom he got gravid by implanting seed, in her unfathomably fecund Eden. The memory of a woman’s company would bring his ambulations to a halt to aim his gaping face due heavenward, the dewy air her touch, her taste, sweet salt.