Blue Pages 3.3 — Norbert Kovacs

. . .

FROM THE ELEMENTS

by Norbert Kovacs

     The earth rises against the man as he takes his hard steps. Rock erupts in huge shafts

before his feet so he cannot walk straight. The man cries in frustration, "An unfair land!"
A grinding noise drowns his words and the cries of his thousand scattered companions.
The sound whirs and sings in his ear.

     Each time the earth rises at him, the man falls. When he stands again, he is smaller in

size, lesser. The man collapses several times. The ground is hard and rough on each

occasion. He kicks at it in anger. However, he comes not to fear his falls nor losing height

and weight. A large body, he finds, is no asset when tumbling to the ground.

     The man breaks some body part--an arm, his jaw, a rib--whenever he meets the

charging earth. He cannot ignore the damage, so mends himself. He binds the broken

bone. He suffers casts on his limbs. His newly mended body is loose-jointed. His torso

joggles when he walks. His hip bounces. The man takes it in stride. He becomes like an

ant on the march, always shuffling; he nears an ant in size, too, as he shrinks with each

fall.

     The man walks without any belongings; he has interest no longer for the many he'd

had. He passes freely among the thousand small clumps to which the land has subsided.

His old comrades, the giants, have perished; their dull, heavy corpses strew the earth like

monuments. The man passes by them. He leaves no trace of a path; he believes he should

not mark the earth with his transient steps anyway.




Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. His stories have appeared in Westview, Gravel, STORGY, Corvus Review, and The Write Launch. Norbert's website is www.norbertkovacs.net.