Have you ever wanted to go someplace you don’t speak the language? Where no one has heard of the place you come from and no one cares? Where the customs seem bizarre but no one thinks to explain them? Where it seems anything you imagine can come true but still some things surprise you?

Have you ever wanted to throw a dart at a map and just go there with someone you have never met?

If you could have anything from the sky, what would it be? The question is metaphorical or literal, however you like it best.

If they ever do figure out once and for all what makes us exist and experience that existence uniquely, and if we read that explanation and nod and shrug and it makes total sense and we can even grasp it intuitively, it’s still going to be mind-blowing when that mysterious sensation of it chases everything else out of mind for a tiny moment, a sensation impossible to hold on to.

If you were on one of those floating cubes, what would you be doing, how would you be balanced?

Have you ever woken up with a dream you wanted to remember, but lost it an hour later?

I can’t even imagine what today’s installment would have been if things had gone differently. My Twitter friends page is a wall of hope and optimism.

In a secret field, you will run up to a scarecrow. It will lift its pumpkin head and rake us free a tunnel through the sky. The leaves will be firm enough to stand on.

When you stand in front of me and sing I can hear your voice behind me.

I want to find the end of this world, the dome that has enclosed us, but our scarecrow, with straw dropping out from between his buttons, is no help, he sleeps, slumped against his rake. I ask you, but you touch a finger to my lip. I wonder if your eyes have always looked like this.

There is nothing left to say. The autumn never ends, and perhaps I should be concerned about how many leaves remain, but there are no question marks to ask with, only songs.

Have you ever had a plan fall apart completely, only to discover something so much better you had missed in all your narrow planning?

This is the sixth and final element in a series of six installments beginning here: http://secretvespers.com/2008/07/21/pieces-part-1/. Each one uses a harlequin pattern and adds a couplet to the story. The hidden text of each one begins with “the romance of”.

Is it possible to deliver justice from the bay doors of a bomber? Have you ever had a dream that was at the same time gruesome and calm?