I stumbled across this
wonderful nodeshell less than a day after stumbling across an
abandoned textile mill in the woods a few miles from
my house so old that what must have once been "
NO TRESPASSING" signs on the fences surrounding it had
faded completely to white. My friend
Layne and I of course felt obligated to investigate, and found the most
silent place I have ever been. We spent more than an hour wandering around, and it wasn't until we were back outside that we realized that neither of us had spoken during our time inside. It felt like a
holy place, completely forgotten by the world, and it wouldn't have felt right to disturb that kind of perfect, dead peace. Anyway, these lines occured to me after seeing this nodeshell:
We walked these hollowed,
hallowed halls,
Where the
fingerbone rebar skeletons
Once pushed their slow tips from scaling cement skins
And ancient standing pools of
rust bled,
A slick and sickening
stigmata on the floor.
We walked these
rheumy, gloomy rooms,
This broken factory for its
secret ghosts.
These moldy, dim-lit chambers attested
To some heyday and some later failure.
We solemnly wondered what went wrong.
We walked these tremendous, empty dens,
Where even the
spiders had starved long ago in the dark
Before some
heretic rockthrower let in light and
Blinded the blasted windowed eyes in, and now
Their dessicated corpses hang from
gossamer catacomb threads.
We walked these
labyrinthine passages,
With their silent miles of reaching cable, pipe, and wire,
Searching for a clue, reverent, taciturn, hushed.
We tried to find with
ancient eyes a sign of life,
Found nothing but the smell of tombdust and dead bleach collapse.
We walked these muted,
tubercular cellars,
For a glimpse of growth, some gentle suggestion of motion,
But the age of the death in that place
Guarded its own past with a distant im
mutability.
We were too much living to uncover any
hidden truth,
Too vital in a place death long ago forgot to care about,
And our breathing could not disturb
the sleep of the ancient saints
Which no longer wander those
holy halls or menace intruders,
But forever stand stiff, impassive, massive and unknown.
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