You’re going to make a father out of me: first snake I’ve held; first baby I’ve cared for. I place my hand into your cage; you sniff and avoid when it’s obvious to me you should glide right on. Only after both of my hands have lain on either side of you and you’ve tucked yourself into a ball, head resting on curls, do I realize I must pick you up directly. You don’t snap when I pinch; then it’s hand over hand over hand: non–stop. On the table, in the sun, you stretch out into a new world. You don’t know and there’s no way for me to tell you: it’s small. Just one big circle as far as the eye can see: only, snakes are blind. You’re so young; you need this experience to learn to move, to understand your body. You head straight for the edge; it’s instinctual or inevitable. And there’s my hand. It’s such a long drop; I don’t want you bruised or dead. So, here’s my hand. And you comprehend. And, though it’s not the best new place to go, perhaps it’s the only place you know. And, back on the table you go and straight to the edge. I blame the small circle you’re in; and, a hand I extend. And you still search for ground. I pull up a chair, in case you want to leave. Do you dare? You sense something underneath; though it be further than you’re long, you hover down till — plump — you fall belly to the sun. You twine between the slats till, like water, you find that sinking leg and dive down — despite its sheer plastic, crimp on it with your pinky–full stomach until — plop — again. Back to the circle and its edge you go. This time, no hands, though. We are both learning about falling here. Now, I see you can smell the ground — or its absence — and I let you dip as far off the edge as you dare; head and belly drip with just your scales left to grip and that fine sense of gravity, refined from your last fall, saves you or perhaps this is normal activity with which I’ve just been meddling? Now, you gracefully circle and dip along the edge without fear to slip; just desperate for some place wherewith to get down. I guess I’ve learned my lesson, now, knowing, as I take you in my hand, we needn’t go hand over hand over hand. And I need not worry about your leaning on me while upon my hand you circle ’round. to curl into a peaceful perch — until you sniff deeper ground.
Month: April 2011
Chapman
Munch and marvel upon the apple. Its planter’s footsteps tread on. We share this future time with him: its tang on our lips.
Golden Ore Fairy
Margrave was teaching an art class. In the school, I see a beautiful poster for it. Something like “Express yourself”.
I go down to the school basement. I’m enrolled to take classes with young people. They are wizards with a Harry Potter feel to them.
The next scene I remember is my station wagon skidding around — something like a PT cursor and a woody — having just left the main road full of battle. The dogs were safe. The back door and a side door ended up flung open.
I look around for spirits because I sense they are with me… as if we must have been working together or I’ve already seen proofs of their assistance. There, off from and behind the left-hand side of the car, was a golden spirit. She looked like a collection of gold ore, was human-sized, perhaps on the tall side; even her wings were of heavy ore. And when I say ore I mean rough, raw, lumpy, dark with chunky flecks.
The scene then jumps to her shutting the car doors.
“You’re going to have to get moving,” she says. To my pleasant surprise she stays, hanging on the outside of the passenger-side window as I turn around in the woodsy cul-de-sac and I pick up speed.
“You are going to have to learn Greek.”
And that was fine, because I was taking a class for Greek at school. I’ll just study extra hard. What a great feeling to be watched over this way. There was this familiarity of working together for good, casual, friendly work. The tiny, pesky, red, man-sized demi-dragons were making their course around the bend and my fairy casually, and with straw hat flapping in the wind, courteously departed.
Spring
The week between heating and air–conditioning when frogs whir and birds sing
Doctor Elsie and Company
I give a black man a ride. He tells of how he first arrived here from overseas. How he wasn’t given of the funding promised him when he arrived, so he had to make do.
We arrive at the doctors office. We sit down in the waiting room. Just then he gets to the part about ten-thousand Chinese with a thousand dollars between them. He becomes distraught; I get choked up. I think to myself, how am I going to be a good doctor if this gets me unsettled?
I’m called to the back. It’s a pleasant back hallway, reminiscent of a hospital hallway. I’m nervous and incredulous these folks are accepting of my taking a doctor’s role without any training or knowledge. I peak into an office room. In a small part of the room, I see a quaint sign with a medical serpent emblem saying something like psychic studies. This reassures me. I’m called to see a patient. This will be interesting.
As I walk down the hallway, a woman walks beside me and hands me a book. It’s white with metallic blue letters and a simple golden snowflake (a hexagon with lines continuing out). She thanks me for the book. I don’t understand what she means. “You and Chelsea and Elsie (the two doctors here) wrote it.”
Hmm. I look at the writing a couple page back from the bookmark and the conversation we are having is in the book. This gives me a good, wholesome feeling — a special, cared-for feeling.
Somehow we are turned around. Elsie comes into to see the patient just as I was about to begin with him or her.
I go to the lunchroom with the woman who gave me the book. It’s more significant than a lunchroom: there is a feeling of home and that this is the center of many cultural activities; still, it’s normal-sized.
There is a nice, wide table of unpolished, comfortable wood. The woman and I have a seat. Doctor Chelsea sits across from us. There is a feeling that a presentation is going to begin, but the atmosphere is that which precedes a family member presenting to a family without any feeling of business obligation.
Elsie sits down besides me to my right. Again, there is a family feel here, one of immediate acceptance, as if we’ve been doing this together for a while, or, it’s the comfort of being happy with what one does and being involved with a thoroughly solid and good and wholesome practice. Elsie settles in as though she’s about to tuck into a good sandwich. “Oh, mom’s here too,” she says with a grateful nonchalance.
Contraction
One touch turns my clear, cold lake ashimmer, Triggers my steady stream of smoke into a plume of vortexes. I pull my skirt down; still, my ridiculous, silky legs form an arrow as bright as a billboard advertising that cleft in my soul, beating in my stomach. Your seawater seeps into my clam, irritating my muscle, violating my space. You fucker, sticking a thumb into my polished lens that held a million colors: a thumbprint rending all my pictures blurry. My body quakes with chain reaction: I will never be whole again. My life condemned: a vain attempt to protect this urchin part of me — Only for it to continue on into as many grains of sand in the sea.
Les Miserables
Not the ruby baubles the factory man works so hard to impress, But the slumbering body relieved of its day’s demands… and perhaps a lay–in Saturday morning
The Accumulated Weight of Experience
I’m the director of a high school play. The play is being held in an amazingly vast and spacious theatre, much bigger than any professional theater would accommodate. It’s very professional and high class. All or most of the seats are taken, despite the hugeness. I’m looking at this from above.
In the same wise as this detached hovering, I’m beginning to walk down a very long and spacious hallway. It’s equally well appointed with shiny hardwood floors. It’s here I consider myself as an actor rather than director. I remember trying out and acting for the high school play Working. I realize it’s not a matter of talent: talent is honed over many initiatory experiences. The ability to remember lines, itself, is something that an actor learns over the repeated exposure to the demand of memorization. So, it made sense for me to give a try for a little part and for a director to inquire about one’s resume as a matter of course to get a feel for whether the heft of experience meshes with the heft of the role.
I’m beginning to approach the front desk after walking, floating, down this long immaculate hallway. I feel myself become nervous as I hover towards it, anticipating a face to face with a beautiful clerk; yet, I abstain from going to the front desk. I go ahead past the desk right into the backroom where the hotel owner is. I disregard a feeling of entering into great danger. My brain seizes, processing what I’m about do to: I strangle the owner.
Well–tempered
Heaven might be found on a mountaintop; we could be lost in the desert flats for all I care. As long as the vehicle is cared for, we still have someplace to go.
A Small Lament and Appreciation for Hidden Things
I’m in a department store. I walk around with a lady. She’s a friend and a store manager. They have hidden items that you would only see when wearing special glasses. These items will eventually be visible to all after a time. We talk about Christmas decorations; I mention the fact that a place like Wal-Mart will be stuffed to the gills with Christmas decorations; she laments this. We pass by this store’s little bit of Christmas offerings.
Something about a narrow hideaway shelf that I’m really glad is there because then I can put this printer like device that fits well there and is out of everyone’s knowing.