Now being stripped line for line, minced back into almost elemental alphabet, David is being reconstructed...

The cheating S.O.B. of sleep has receded like the horizon he pursues, fawning obsequiously as through the new light wants only to greet someone else further away, night chasing him but he is pinned on the riverbank. David lies between dream and day, headlocked by Jacob’s angel and Belial’s noogie, tangled in watersnakes. Fist, heart, clench and unclench against themselves, his knuckles tight yellow and puce.

David scans the length of the clammy damp skin of river and spits on that veneer of dry blue ease.
He is wise to it, reveals the telling dark wake whose sillibants glint winks of snake eyes. His nerves jerk taut, snagged on the Serpent's shadows in ripples, black forms nearly break the surface. He smells their eager poison. Dilute it laps though reeds towards his unyielding limbs, he unconsciously stiffens.

Later, breaking awake, his mouth set tense, David plays the steady deadly weight of another water-smoothed flat stone, rolls it along index finger with thumb an allows a small smile. He levels his gaze,

Stands tall, calmed, chosen.
He flicks his wrist towards the length of the river; it sk- sk-
sk-
sk- skips, skips,
skips,
skips until
his victory is a distant deep resonance pulsing through his brain.

That rhythm internalized, he wets his lips, feels the release of his shoulders, lick of breeze,
Lightness beginning under his ribs, a flush spirals ease within his fingertips, he mantras himself alert:
There can be no training, no discipline, no relief, without Goliath against me.

A country away, shading the Euphrates to grey, the Philistine bends,
cups his hand to drink, the horizon, disquieteningly still.

David scans the water; the thin damp skin of blue sky.
Eyes then hand dart down, then he stands, calmed.
He has palmed the water-smoothed flat stone, is
Playing the steady weight between index finger and thumb.
Lips set tense, he flicks his wrist; it skips 4 times;
It satisfies, sinks as a pill into the intestinal river depths.

Fist, heart, clench against themselves; under the surface
black forms nearly break, nerves catch Serpent's shadows
in grasses, its tension twists through his thick limbs;
There can be no training, no discipline, no relief,
Without that David shading the Euphrates to grey as he bends.
Goliath cups his palm to drink, horizon, disquieteningly still.