STORY FROM BEFORE I COULD REMEMBER
Travis
skips back towards camp
with a
dead rattler
on a
stick. Lookit!
Look
what I found! He’s
four,
and so
excited the snake
slips off
the stick.
He’s a
good boy. He knows
not to
bare-hand dead
and scary
things, so Trav
stops,
squats, picks it up
by the
tail, puts it back
on the
stick, returning
the body
to its carrier
carried by
another
body,
these three entities
of tree,
child, and reptile
together a
few more
moments,
the living
carrying
the dead,
scampering
back to camp,
to what
passes, for now, for home.
SWINGS
AT EAST SIDE REC
In all the
weathers of winter—
ten
degrees, rain, snow (once
freakily
so in lightning),
unseasonably
warm,
or the
deepest part, 4:30
and
already pitch-black—
all
winterlong, she’s out here.
She’s not
old, but maybe should be
too old to
do this every dusk
while I
pick up my kid from school.
Nothing
stops her from rocking the swingset
so hard at
the amplitude
the pole
pulls out a notch
and at the
middle point
the frame
digs deeper
into
earth, now near dark,
the chains
nearly parallel
to the
ground, and the trough worn
by so many
children’s feet.
Swing on,
ageless weirdo,
with only
so much of the day left
before
setting off into silver night.
No comments:
Post a Comment