I found these young words on the top of an aging pile of pieces of myself (if not pieces of myself, then single spikes that have kept my train of thought steady on its rumbling way).
I found the words, the idea, that follows and I tripped on it, like a book in the middle of a path through a dark room. I hit the floor and found myself looking at a collection of analogous memories I’d been hiding under my metaphorical bed. Sometimes memories find each other, mate, and have monsters as offspring.
May I introduce you to one such memory, the proud new parent of a monstrous newborn…
The Old Scoundrel’s Ode to Lively Lives
On these gentle passes
Which float us from one life to a second beauty,
A new yet affable whim of lust
For fantasy and the fragility of satisfied hungers,
We are eager toes wrung tight
To a blade of grass,
Sharp and vivid with the arrival of unescaped electricity,
For a kind of stable state,
For a home among the unfamiliar lions
And all the colors of new birds
Without names or meaning
Or human mirrors.Yet we go on like lovers
Quiet in the ebb of expectation,
Placing a shivering palm onto every awkward
Shadowed body part,
And through every Rosemary sprig,
Singing as we give sidewalks purpose
Between here and there and the river.We believe in the things that are hidden,
The ghosts whose names we know or not,
And we worship the echoes we leave
On the far sides of fences, on porches,
For children who will grow up slow
To hang their shoes on power lines.
