The Jigsaw
That process of putting the puzzle of
you (that’s me) together in front of
the someone (whom we shall name I
Wanna), at least as much as that control
is yours (that’s mine)….
It’s laughable
to me that I’m even an ounce of a mystery.
And I really know that I’m not (nor never
was) brooding.
But I can find myself (and
have on too often an occasion) jaw-dropped
amazed at how large and self-important parts
of me remain so unfiguroutable to the folks
I’d really love to get got by. That’d be those
closest, especially those with whom I set out
(with sheer intentionality) to make .. the most
close! I generally chalk this off to just one
of those things I’ve lived with ever since
refusing to be read like a book. And who really
wants (to be) Ducky when Ren McCormack’s
in town?!. When it comes to such puzzles, I
suppose it might be true that the secret to being
a you (or a me) might lie somewhere a whole
lot closer to the being than the showing.
This thought and ones of peering out
my bedroom window over and over
and over, age six through seventeen,
often accompany each other–another
unnecessary mystery, perhaps, but
what’s a big backyard tree if not a
puzzle of some sort? A puzzle
with maybe just too many branches,
I am thinking. But still .. memories.
Having my eyes stretch almost all the
way through the slats of the blinds
when (and how often!) up pops
a little rainstorm that’s soon enough
spitting sticks (little branches of elm)
all over the backyard (which is pretty big!).
But what’s even to be made of the concept
of big when later that same week, say: your
self-same eyes (through the very same slats)
are all agog with MOVEMENT,
a hailstorm, to say the least. Wherein –
according to the pelted alarms going off
all over town – almost surely must have
living somewhere within it (and at the very least)
a tornado (or two?). Now that kid knows well
that the elm’s got sticks and that the elm’s got
well, a super extra long and thick arm of yet
another elm tree .. halfway up itself –
and that that long .. let’s-call-it-a-bough ..
drips a weathered rope from which,
almost all the way down to a
small but familiar dirt patch (that's churning
up a loaf of mud on this occasion), has dangling
an old Uniroyal tractor tire. Yes, that same tire
about which everyone who’s ever
actually visited has always asked “How exactly
did that get up there?”
(“Wull, I dunno .. Dad?”) ..
You’ve swung that tire for ages; almost all
yours. And what
happens when – no,
don’t look out there now! – just past
where the rope is tight-strung, somewhere
just about where the tree’s HEART (the
WHOLE tree’s heart) must surely beat,
or so you’ve always figured, just SNAPS!?
And then, with a little whirl of the Pinto’s
windshield wipers, say .. after who knows
what-all destruction takes place, mostly
just in the form of time passing,
here you are at the trunk of that great elm.
It’s not really even sittable anymore.
It’s just sort of there, without anything else but
the mud and a few of the old beagle’s bones.
This is, needless to say, well after you’ve picked
which anti-hero you’ll still be trailing (more than
likely long after you’ve given up on the idea of
any hero at all, really).
Gone are the days filled
with thoughts about miracles performed by Dad.
Gone are the days laden with weather-related fears,
or of being beholden to anything that might snap a
tree in two for any other reason but to create a product
(Like a piece of that puzzle? That’s another thought
that doesn’t cross your mind, of course.)
Today, there’s just the mud, the blankish
canvas of the past, a bit of chicken that’s
been rubberized by a long-gone dog,
and a backyard that if given notice at all just ..
seems considerably smaller. And if one were to
approach this figure of you, one might
almost hear a sort of constant tinkle-tink
emanating from somewhere just behind
just about out-maneuvered lanky
into something a bit more
stump-like. And, yeah,
that would be, in retrospect
an unrepentant me, more drool
than brood, with a head clean empty
but for a percussive, metallic-arrythmic
garble coming from a group of I Wanna’s
all clinking and clanging and whining to be
found and all figured out.
