Category: Wonder

Dream Melt

From the last ice age.

the imagination is where it rains paint onto frescoes
of figures to crowd the divine comedy clubs where we
come and go every evening, no ID, no cover at the door

carrying our huddled masses of memory on backs
crunching shells of peanuts and empires on the floor
the strobe light pulsars keeping time with unborn stars

first wears the crown––it is the chicken or the egg,
but who can say is on the mic now, to proclaim
in a language unknown to whomever has ears

no tears need translation and what is the time?
it is lost and what is the point? only a moment
and where did it begin? in the beginning

was the word and the word rained down where
we gathered here to catch it back to the mouths
of us speaking all at once in the land where

the constant rain is coming
from the vision at the bottom
of the iceberg where it

melts

The Making of Myths

Of the stuff of facts.

How crystal on one side, flame on another: one self-organizing, the other of order from noise. How both rivet the gaze. How depth must be hidden on the surface. Why what is hidden is often of no interest. Except when one is looking for something merely possible. Except where merely possible looms a vast atmosphere to contain whole cosmos, where the opus has no definitive form and is instead a series of attempts to reach it. What monster in the waves before the days of recorded history waits beneath the surface beyond detection, to re-emerge as who.

Plaything

Playtime with cephalopod.

They were infamously difficult to study, known to refuse the crude foodstuffs offered by scientists as offensive to their refined tastes.  For example, they would have nothing to do with frozen shrimp. These members of the phylum Mollusca were likely not what Plato had in mind when he observed that if we are the playthings of the gods, then play is the most serious thing we do. Such considerations simply were not made. To do so would be to a blasphemy of unspeakable genus. The custom, when it came to describing the creatures one preferred to dissociate from was to declare them to be incapable of thought––an interesting and even artful collection of cells and systems, patterns and even grace, but not cognition. 

It was reasoned that for these non-thinking others that were surely quite unlike ourselves, there could be no fear of death beyond instinct and therefore neither mourning nor inclination to register captivity as tragic. After all, how could a creature incapable of foresight lament the possibility that it may not return to the known world?

Among our kind, certain unknowns often register as their own justifications. We have within us a tremendous capacity to decorate our blind spots in manners suggestive of insight. 

Then an octopus was observed to gather stones at the mouth of the den that it entered, presumably to prevent the entrance of potential intruders. Foresight? Perhaps. Some scientists conceded.

Later, the scientists observed the difficult creatures in play, bouncing objects, juggling, manipulating out of curiosity––us?

The creatures were indeed capable of a great deal, but surely not that. It was declared. Studies continued.

***

Inspired by this morning’s encounter with and excerpt of David Toomey’s work in LitHub “On the Uncanny Way Octopuses Play.”

Morning

Breeze at dawn.

Red sun? The weight of grace.
Pelt of bottle caps? Dragon’s hide.
In this world? But not to know.
Come? Closer.

Next time you see this, it will have another face.
This is about the shuffling on the ground.
Take off your shoes and we will gather cloth.
For what? A revival garment to resemble time.

Now and When

The long look.

It is an act of devotion, the artist told us. To what we wondered, and she replied only looking. Which, she clarified, is of a different kind than spectating. To look long and well, as she did, was an exercise in love. She watched the neighborhood, noticed what changed. She kept the ancestors at her desk. They watched her and she looked back. They kept up a running conversation in her workspace. She watched the water, announced: it’s coming. It crept up our shores and she watched the water and watched the birds. They came and went, not unlike the visitors at her desk. She looked long and well. She was working out responses to the questions the children would ask, about how to live here now. With these, she went to the water, the ancestors, the birds. And to the other artists she knew. We need each other, I know that much, she said. We stayed with her as the water made its way.

***

Inspired by a recent  BOMB interview by Wendy S. Walters with writer Emily Raboteau.

Saturday Afternoon Sirens

Life in limbo.

I was driving to get cash, listening to a story and missing many key parts because it was in French. In the gaps my mind would turn over certain questions. Like how will I ever?––etc. And possible responses, like when there is time. From this blurred body in what the nuns would call limbo, somewhere between living and dead. That was before zombies started having their moment. Well, flood me then, I thought, in a manner of praying. I walked back with the cash, having gone inside even though there was a drive-through with no one in it, because I do not like the feeling I have in the drive-through, low in the driver’s seat, having to reach up while the monitor face smirks down. Before me, I watched a woman crossing the street, carrying flowers. She wore something like a tracksuit, and I only saw the back of her. Her hair had no visible white but there was a certain halt to her gait, a learned care in stepping, the kind that suggests the bones are becoming more bird-like, emptying themselves of themselves. I thought: a new grandmother! I watched her with a smile, in astonishment at what must flutter in her heart as she carries them to where she is going. That such moments still happen. I started the car, returned to listening to the story. It is always a war story. I cannot remember another kind. This woman with flowers is not another kind, that’s the wonder of it. How she rushes to see the new baby. This woman who will hold the new baby, born of her daughter, and coo, hello, little one, as the sirens wail.

Force Like Water

Upon arrival.

Sometimes, with the predictable mess already seeming to be written as it laps with greedy lips at the attention of the assembled, hungry for confirmation of certain known pillars of popular opinion, it is easy to miss the appearance of this other thing, which will show itself sometimes to those who are tired of looking, of taking in the spectacle of predictable tropes. Today, for example, it was a creature of spectacular plumage, resting its wings in the rafters in the dark, its feathers so bright they glowed. Looking down between bouts of casual grooming, the creature had about itself such a stark matter-of-factness that my first reaction was to assume that my mind was up to one of its old tricks, dreaming or conjuring this image from fatigue or delusion. Delusions, as anyone knows, are always reluctant to give themselves up.

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%