I pull the elephant ears out of the water, one and then a handful and then none for awhile, risking dead fish and live snakes to find you. At dinner the little boy asks what miscarriage is and my answer is accurate but brief because why tell a little boy about lost siblings and the trees grown in their place or the way that forgetting is not better than carrying this
This memory of you dark, indelible angel, in the midst of all I hold dear.
The young fella folding library mailers eyes the old ladies as they cross the light-filled atrium. They are an exclamation point and a question mark traveling at processional speeds, arms entwined for mutual ballast. I take my own child’s arm, tell her that if we play our cards right one day they will be us, we will be them…while the young fella wears a reddish “cadet” tee and a off-grey beanie in the late days of May in the heart of Texas–bit warm for beanies, she says.
Better to catch the eye of all the pretty girls, I tell her on the way home.
So young to be caught in a prisoner’s dilemma they give me vaguely concocted descriptions of a car we all know is fiction to cover for what we all know is true.
Take note of how young they are, intrinsically lovable despite their wanton ways. Can I will them to safety, to slow down for all of us–still alive, for now
Give the young bullet-fast toys; hope they survive
Hope we all survive while the 911 dispatcher asks–“yes, but what is your emergency ?”
Wanna quote Flannery O’–the life you save may be your own.
We name the fox Kristofferson after the character in the Wes Anderson movie. He sticks to the shadows but when he emerges you know it is him–not a cat or stray dog, too vulpine to be anything else and we are worried because the kittens are in the woods somewhere while their mother is out.
What can I do?
Leave the children in the running car? Leave the headlights on? Turn on the flashlight? Stomp through the tall grass into no-man’s-land? Keeping eye contact with him all the while? As if I could just scare him off from where the young ones are?
…pray they survive the night.
I have puzzled all day about the story I would give you. About a boy much like you–great jump, irrepressible hair, a first-class legal mind, puffin in spirit.
You and I worry about things:
Sharks in the water
Big waves
The occasional brain tumor
But my words do not begin to be enough
how to tell you
You-always-you
My beautiful child
The moon recites the prayer with me, tethered to a God who never sleeps Our Father, who art in heaven…where does the slivery-thin-orange moon go when it passes below the shoulder of the hill? To all the other insomniacs…hallowed be thy name…indeed You hear me, Maker of that smoke wisp moon, Maker of the metonymy of darkness, a body can rob a body of light until You are here …Thy kingdom come…thy will be done…among the sleepless…on earth as it is in heaven.
Deep porch for rocking. Wrap around so that the boy with the ol’ stick horse can barrel around each corner. A telephone nook even though we both know nobody calls anymore. And the unwieldy kitchen in the heart of it all-ghost-kitchen attempting to take natural light from the living and sun rooms respectively while even the closets have seen things, terrible things
As if an old house could ever just stand by and
say nothing at all.
Given the choice between
Chilling with
A flock of wolves meticulously dressed up in sheep’s clothing
Or a pack of sheep
Aiming to pass for wolves
I would always pick the latter
how about you?
I tire of us
Top of the food chain (for now)
And rendered myopic by shear foolish thinking
You think you will be made immortal by
What?
Clever rocketry, singing voice, signature ass?
Naw. We all just be
bits of fur
Here for a minute
Gone tomorrow
Best prepare for when we go
up or down
Yonder.
Sometimes I can hear them through the digital quilt of my son’s smartphone, San Antonio songbirds not unlike the full-throated prophets I hear in the backyard, not minor prophets, like Micah or Nahum, although come to think of it these would be good names for the night birds. No. They are small, easily overlooked, not altogether heard which leads me to my theory about Isaiah, not a minor prophet at all but must’ve wanted to be for awhile in the naked days when his voice competed with the spectacle of it all–ordinary-man-naked, not rendered complete until the blood-and-agony Redeemer he sang about
Proves true.
Carrying Light 