mysteries? Not miseries, which seems to crawl into pockets
like an itch, can be pervasive. I don’t get that. It doesn’t
have to work that way, does it?
But who’s to say? Anyone can say whatever they feel. Or
keep a wardrobe so full of special effects that everyone is
fooled. A heart on a sleeve doesn’t taste very good, I say.
Mine seems invisible to the naked eye.
Each echo has such blunders. But they inspire awe, do they
not? Even the hard-hearted like to give the brazen chamber a
shout out, their large hats swollen in the humid breezelessness
as if in touch with sultry. Such impossibilities.
Complete submission. And happy as clams. Research is
close to exposing a similarity in the grins of several very
unrelated species. So I decide to burn the book. Not
indelibly. That’s pretty impossible for me.
I like to look at photographs of myself and/or from my
perspective – from any moment in the past. Before my birth,
even; that is, through my parents eyes or, with love that’s
almost romantic, deep into the eyes of my grandmother.
The shadow image of my father, as each of my siblings
are – we grew up so – my mother has now taken to saying I
resemble her father more than anyone – as I get older. He was
stilted, quick-tempered, proud, easily red in the face,
and clumsy. He ran the water and sewer department in my
hometown as I was growing up. The town’s latest treatment
facility is named after him. He collected knives, coins and arrowheads
and nurtured an orphaned deer through to maturity – in a rather
small cage in front of the county courthouse. And without my
ever hearing him say it – it was palpable – he was in love.
And grateful. Even sometimes dumbfounded by his luck.
My grandmother, with contrasting grace and glory,
obviously felt pretty much the same. Some animals
and their dumb luck? I believe. Cheesy as a misbegotten
apple pie, perhaps. And you’ve got to take a bite out of it.
Hot! And swimming in butter. Because they go so fast.
