Inscape and Instress

Abstract

Inscape and Instress Steve Lautermilch Inscape God becomes. – Meister Eckhart Spine of a creature long extinct, landscape of brushfire and heat lightning, outcrops and draws of an exhausted sea. Each rise, every descent ribs of a pallet where a body is rising, bed sheets of a bed where a body has been sleeping, the glance of the light over the surface the look on the face of one just beginning to look, hands and feet still asleep, mind not yet come back, not quite ready to break out of the dream, wake from sleep, enter the glare. What was it you saw looking into the embers, who was the face (mask) looking back. The runes of a fire ring at dawn. Instress And God ceases to become. – Meister Eckhart Rower (shade, being rowed), floater, glider (ghost being driven, sailed), turn your head, look over the side, follow the dark shadows that shadow the shadow you cast, water that diamonds facets and fractures, shards and shelves the deep. Rippling along the hull like light before dawn, that fast (not asking) your body (swimmer, diver, surface knifer) is moving, losing (finding) its balance, like petals at dusk leaves (turning, being turned) in the fall creases, breaks in the mantle of a continent (before) you were there (now) you are here, a tick, click of black ice, crystal that strikes (second, minute, hour hand of a pocket watch) sparks at a window pane before (snow melt) it flickers sizzles and goes out. The silver rosary, endless necklace of water, the shiver (stringer) of each bead on an oar blade before the bead falls (glimmer) and is absorbed. © 2013 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life