Ed Harkness
Dark Ages
We understood the world then. It had edges, limits. Books were for the select. We read the weather, studied bones of hens dropped on a napkin. We read the stars. We knew them as the words of God, each word an icy iris watching while we slept. We were certain devils lived in the woods, or lurked in a milk pail to lure our maids, or hissed in a cellar behind the neighbor’s barn, or slept in the stomachs of sheep. The devil’s voice lulls, like drops of water falling on a stone. Love waxed and waned with the moon, or came when snows burdened our trees, lightened later, washed by the lash of rain, followed by flowers followed by toil, endless toil. We sheared the sheep, we endured the pain of our short spans. We understood the forest was a dark thing, goatish, with a goat’s foul breath at night. We understood mud, decay, the suddenness of fevers, chills, clots of blood, shrieks as if from a wagon’s ungreased wheel. Warnings were delivered by our Savior, our Heavenly Father who must be stern and not give in too quickly to our pleas. We were fervent in our ardor for all things unseen, unverifiable, like the bibles few owned, fewer still could read. We prayed, of course, often all the long night. God listened. Trouble was, as like as not, he did little else but glare down, silent as a barren mountain. Because he did nothing, we prayed all the more devoutly. Yes, sometimes we were answered. Spring would arrive – that was proof enough. Fruit trees bore their gifts. Only a few calves were stillborn. Days were warm and bright. While we tilled the stony soil, the devil squeezed out of a pig’s ass, stood up, put on his hose, a silk shirt, twisted his cloven hooves inside a pair of fine leather boots and set off for the next village, his tailored breeches reeking of manure, his yellow hair smelling of piss.
Ed Harkness is the author of three full-length books of poems: Saying the Necessary (2000), Beautiful Passing Lives (2010) and The Law of the Unforeseen (2018), all published by Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press. He lives in Shoreline, Washington.