Little Bang Theory

Standing here, Where the swift, cold green Rides up on the warm rocks, Infusing itself with sunlight, Leaving a bit of its mystery For me to unravel,

I pause.

Is this my womb, my cradle, my destiny?

Perhaps not today, perhaps There’s more for me out here, In the air, in the light, Where the birds are.

Where you are.

In the twilight door of tomorrow, as

A long-haired preacher begs for the

Courage to meet His destiny, this

Wildly tilting world sits

Suddenly upright, transforming the

Snow white innocence of a

Season into a subtle

Suggestion of

Spring.

I made a pizza.

I burned the crust

To a smoldering slab of

Blackened dust.

I ate the toppings

‘Cause they weren’t burnt.

I wish the rest of

My pizza weren’t.

No more whining about how my shoulder will never be all it once was (not that it was ever all that. )

After seeing this over at Saying Nothing Charmingly, I have nothing to say except “Thank You, Christina.”

A calm morning. The river rises up from its channel in a diaphanous fog, tendrils reaching skyward to coalesce in a cloud, a spectral apparition hovering over its corporal self. It expands across the flood plane, silently stalking the corn fields, enveloping the farms, rearranging the season’s dust and grit and pollen into lacy mud curtains on the barn windows.

The sun’s rays penetrate, excite, induce the river to ecstasy as it climbs the surrounding hills.

Higher, thinner, ever expanding like Kirk’s Apollo, arms outstretched, joining the Pantheon of clouds with one last cry of release,

“I’m coming, Athena!”

Too late, I drop a sprig of laurel into the river of life.

Here we stand,

Days,

Nights,

Years,

Watching the corn grow,

Watching the grass grow,

Watching the Hunters curse

As flocks of birds rise, circle,

And disappear over the horizon,

Always in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Is this why we wait?

Is this what we stand for?

Tell me there is more.

Tell me there is a reason

Why we stand here,

Other than to bear witness

To the inevitable.

After shoveling some snow yesterday, I slipped into a convenience store for a coffee.

I handed the attendant a dollar bill from my pants pocket. As he took it, I saw his subtle wince at it’s wetness.

A little embarrassed, I tried to set his mind at ease.

“If it’s moist in Winter, it’s melted snow.”

He stopped, waited expectantly.

“If it’s moist in Summer… you don’t want to know.”

He looked at the bill for a second; then, eyes widening perceptibly, he all but threw it into the register.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

My bed’s a double-decker.

The upper bunk

Is dripping spunk.

“Not Me! It was my pecker!!”

This came to me as I took my Sunday Walkabout up in the woods of Monroe, in a foot of powder snow at the beginning of December.

So you bought that piece of Heaven

Up in the hills, did you?

Where Spring comes in Summer

And Winter in Fall?

Well I hope you like The Longest Season,

‘Cause Buddy, you

Just married it.

Now look what you did. You interrupted me, as if my freezing weren’t even important to you. I wait all year, all year, and when the time is finally right I begin, the way I rehearsed it in my head since the Last Time, when you interrupted me with snow, heavy, sinking snow, and I disappeared below the surface and became a canvass of frozen sludge of varying densities, emerging as a crusty gray thing, condemned to a winter of dampness and dim light.

Oh, how I longed for Spring, to be freed from that form, made light and liquid, given another chance.

And here it is cold, and here I am freezing, and here you are interrupting me again, with your Johnny-Come-Lately windfall and your branch sticking up, your influence radiating in raised ridges as if I were flowing, flowing of all things, when I’m trying to freeze.

All my life I’ve longed for the Clear Complexion of Tranquility, and year after year, there you are, Life, Fate, Happenstance,

Interrupting me!