SIXTEEN

From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly

[Winter, 2005]

What gentle shape is sleep for us? What waits there? And what is coming? I ask myself this. Is it the hollow body: the corporate body? Of course. I’ve been aware, dimly, for some small time, of their arrivals. The call went out, the police are responding, all officers of the law and its servants. They leave a wake in their arrivals, each one, some current in the air, some discharge, an imprint, a scent, and I can feel it. They know how to find me. They know not to find me. They know that I will reach them when it’s time. We make, every man, woman, or thing of the law, we make the body, the hollow body, the corporate form of kind. Waiting in sleep, in stone, sand, and scrub, we become the body of the dead or distant gods, and this, to feed our souls back to them, while they in turn feed and are eaten again by us. The eating gods are eating us, as we are eating the gods. God is good.