Out of the Rift (Sequel to The Shifting Cliff)

The tiny man climbed the ladder of words outside his shoddy barn.
It reached over the gable of his rough hewn home,
and into the whistling winds that circled over his dandelion pastures.

There had never been a day where he had not climbed this ladder,
yet somehow today was different.

There had never been a day where sunburnt seeds
did not flit around the shingles that hung haphazardly,
yet somehow today was different.

There had never been a day where he did not glimpse the small man grow immense,
rise to the shutters of the sky, shake and shudder the horizon,
and watch words burst from cracked cliffs like apples tumbling from an orchard tree,
yet somehow today was different.

The tiny man reached the final rung of his ladder,
and gazed down tiredly at his paper house,
then turned his muttering mouth like a drum's day-beat
and began his own chant,
as the sun squeezed its last sunshine like a dripping orange onto the immense rift.

With his chant's cadence rising,
out of the rift rose melancholy, even as the falling day's light cut glorious shadows amongst his trees.
Through the rift a ribboned road, traveled by few, known by fewer, unraveled.
Above the rift a ribboned blue sky peeled backwards and into it's own arms,
splotching blue stains across the fields where the tiny man's crops lay slumbering.
Inside the rift a small man atop a ladder leaned on a paper house,
singing a mournful dirge where once words lay tumbled and jumbled on paper walls.

The Shifting Cliff (Poem)

A small, giant man stooped low,
out from the overhang above his head,
and into a word-strewn land.

He untethered himself from the rock face,
connecting with the open plains stretching out before him as a palm face opening quietly.
Walking forward, he looked backwards,
at the heart of his hearth,
at the embers like small suns flickering in nighttime shade.

Walking further, he began his life cant,
a chant for life and passage,
and he could slowly feel himself become lighter and lighter,
barely crushing the tips of grass blades under his bare soles,
rising, rising, to cloud shards blanketing his barren plains.

"This is not the end," he chanted,
the cant approaching its climax,
its mountain peak of emotion,
just as he turned and faced the jagged edge rising haughtily
towards clouds like inkstains.
"Oh what a giddy thing," he murmured,
as his outstretched hands beckoned words from their lowly heights.

Then, words, tumbling and winnowing chaff from field, rose.
They rose and rose to the tiny man's arms stretched like taut branches across a horizon,
and danced like marionette strings in the man's smile,
as he hurled them at the shifting cliffs, their faces melting and mocking,
daring his attack.

Screaming, the cliff sides changed and changed, dodging and dying,
crumbling like crushed teeth down their sides,
as the giant finished the chant's final verse,
grew heavy again,
and trudged backwards into his cave.

The nighttime shade embers flickered welcome and happiness,
even as tumbling stones cracked and wedged themselves over the entrance to his home.
"The day grows longer," he whispered to himself,
as he poked the fire into life with his fingers, stirring coals filled with images.