Chris A. Smith

Chris A. Smith

The Last Afternoon

When the last afternoon arrives, we walk out to the dock, the sky flat and white, the breeze barely troubling the water. We settle onto the bench, sturdily rebuilt of treated wood after the last hurricane rolled through, and set about seeing what we can see. One dock over there’s an osprey, straddling a pole like some minor potentate, wings spread wide, chest puffed out, stark black and white in the dazzling light, keening for who knows what. He watches the bird and I wonder what he’s thinking, but there’s no point in asking. Finally he says, That’s a noisy one, then lapses back into silence. He’s in three-quarters profile, unshaven and sunspotted, lines around his mouth carved like dry riverbeds, inscrutable behind polarized lenses. Then three sparrows spiral by, chittering, jabbering, they spin and dive and chase. He turns to watch, mouth pursed, and I think he’s about to speak again, but no words come. Instead we sit in silence, the world in suspension, and I think: remember this, because it will not come again.

Chris A. Smith

Singing Black Sabbath Songs with Strangers

The room is humid like a cave, pungent with the smell of beer and crusty denim, our heads wreathed in low-hanging clouds of weed smoke. The first chords toll, airless and doomy, ominous like an approaching storm, and we shiver in anticipation. Yes, we all know this song. The singer emerges from stage right in a three-piece suit and a pig mask— “War Pigs,” get it?— and we enjoy the joke, there are no haters here. We shout along to every lyric, every “Oh lord, yeah,” our voices hoarse, foreheads sweat-sheened, reeling with the effort, shoulder to shoulder, a dervish mass of pumping fists and windmilling hair, The song rises to its finale, chiming, pentatonic, elegiac, and we understand that the world is fallen, always has been. But here in front of the stage, we are together, we are one, in ecstatic communion.