Jan 1, 2007

Soon there'll be the elephant rumbling from the apartment above
The plump, brown children performing their acrobatics
and their parents who chide them in Spanish

But now, there's the quiet that follows a breakfast
of bacon and tender eggs. My poor timing with the spatula
my laziness with draining grease from the dead ham
mean smoke in the rooms, an odor that I'll regret later
after returning from my walk

I'll regret the impregnation of pig fat into my couch
and wonder if they can smell it upstairs, though
I can't smell their meals, so I'm undecided if they cook
Mexican, or American, or perhaps they are epicures
and I'm guilty of racial stereotyping

I'm certain of my next door neighbors, whose aromas
of curry, saag and paneer blend with their loud, hyenic laughs
They are unfailingly polite to me, and I don't know why
except that they've been bred to be

Upstairs, a toilet has been flushed; I listen to its piped waterfall
On the street, a truck sluices through last night's rain
which forms because of dirt in the atmosphere, clumping
molecules into drops. It's as if people threw their pollution
up, the way kids throw glitter at grandma, but instead of laughing
the sky shudders and wrings, and the unwelcome soil gets redeposited

We're all--the Mexicans, the Indians, and me--thinking
right now
in our native languages. Maybe we get along because at night
quiet except for snoring and rain
and still except for our cooking haze settling into our walls
our vocabularies mingle without the impediment of speech

Later, I'll probably see them and say "Hi", and they'll say "Hi"
and for me that's the only word, but for them it's a second word
or a third word. They know their own culture. They're learning mine
I'm the stranger, welcomed. I'm the guy who fries bacon, buys
Indian takeout, microwaves cheese burritos, all with an American accent

Jan 2, 2007

(somewhat inspired by Naming of Parts)

Today is Filing of Letters Day
Tomorrow with be Doing the Books Day, followed closely
by Sweating the Taxes Day
But today is Filing of Letters

The letters in their burial mound, white with envelope snow
red with Christmas card blood, my dead animal of a year
that can't be identified without an autopsy

That's today's science lesson, reading and dissecting each letter
even the company communiques assuring me they apprecaite
the way I pay on time
Each postal date stamp revisited, each envelope a coffin
whose body I exhume, reading for clues. Where was I
on the night of November the 5th?

Home, no doubt, no witnesses, except neighbors who see the light on
which could mean anything, officer, he often goes out, we see him
toting his fencing bag, big as a body
Fencing, you say?
Yes, officer. He says he likes to stick people

The detectives could deerstalk all day and prove nothing. They'd
cart back my boxes of letters, my mausoleums
And maybe they'd call in a profiler, a specialist, who would
claim I was no killer. Just a poet. A lone poet, with no
conspirator behind a knoll.

He worked alone, chief,
the man would say


Jan 3, 2007

My right arm reaches over
and before I know what it's doing, it
finds the pillow where you are not

You aren't specific these days, you
are not where I thought
or when. Instead, you're somewhere

up front of me, instead of beside me
Except. Except there's a you in my head
a you you are not, exactly, but close

You're close, some days, close
as that pillow that's warm, I realize with a rush
warmed somewhow by you who are not there


Jan 4, 2007

It's Menuhin playing St. Matthew
The black and white footage still reveals
his blonde hair, his nobleman's face
cast in spotlight

He has a build like a champion horseman
He's still while playing, moving just what
the music requires, his bow arm that can
be a piston is, during Bach, an oil pump

like you still see in Oklahoma, perpetual
motion. Menuhin's eyes aren't on his fingers
or the conductor, or the audience. They're
inward, on the music. To play the Passion

he parts the air like earth and views Bach's new home
Bach, who instructs him on the tonal mathematics
of the planets, who now composes for Menuhin's
other family, his siblings whom he left when he was born

Each note surrounds his stillness. Each phrase echoes
Menuhin's conversation with Bach and the angels


Jan 5, 2007

El Vampiro's woman resolves from the mist
that's like a cigar smoke shawl over the tree branches
Her twelve foot long train, ebony lace, unwittingly
brooms the floor's flour dust. She is to Mexican
gothic what Aphrodite is to the grecian urn. Any man
would succumb to her, plunge his face into her, drown.

Tonight I watch with English subtitles, but next time
I'll stare uncaptioned at ice coffee eyes and cream breasts
el doctor so chivalric, young Marta's neck pricked twice
the mad aunt, mad but right and righteous and the true
hero, gargoyle faced, lithe, a dancer among coffins

Did they joke on the set? Catch a smoke between scenes
of blood and deceipt? I bet they did. And I bet
in bed they dreamed of fangs and "Cut!" and grinding pelvises
thick with flesh and cotton. I bet the monsters they played
snatched their heartbeats. I bet they woke up praying


Jan 6, 2007

It's the Flintstones TV, the bird pecking the show into stone
Or maybe it's the Wonkavision: "'You should open your mouth
a little wider when you speak.'"
Or, likely, it's you saying, "Can you imagine how it felt
being the captain of the Titanic?"

Most men would tell their pals, "Dude, she's hot," as if
that were an Ensteinian word equation, the pinnacle of
compliments, the unified female complimentary theory.

And your eyes are black as a crow's feathers
Your lips are wet like whisky
Your hips curve like a champagne bottle
You are, dude, hot

But it's the anvil in your heart my ears catch
the rap of a steady hammer, the ping sounding from
your depths just like the Titanic's warning bell must
have rung during her descent, before the ice water
stilled it.

You have an accountant's certainty that things add up
or they don't. You're the lion who hunts and then sleeps
You, laughing, collapsing around around your core, but
reborn as a star from gravity and dust.


Jan 7, 2007

The lake has mist like water twelve seconds before boiling
You step to it, reach, let it lick your fingertips
"It's not so cold."

Until our clothes drop, until the air pounces on our skin
until you dive and spray me, until I find and envelope your furnace body
"See?"

The current ignores us while we taste each other's salt water
then sluices between us, a chilly aqua bible
"Let's go back."

Fifty-seven laughs to the tent that tumbles us in, strips us, zips us
The trapped bird feathers stoke air, vapor heats our lips
"Let's go back."


Jan 8, 2007

The devil rides along in the car
humming the Flatt & Scruggs I'm playing
commenting on the beauty of leafless trees in streetlight

Like the best genius devils, he's invisible
but chatty. At first, I mistake him for my own thought
which has slipped into what ifs

Like rambling banjos, brains play the tunes we put
into them. But the devil's waiting for the three measure rest
when he'll draw his own bow on my fiddle


Jan 9, 2007

Is there such a thing as sleep appropriation?
The antonym of deprivation, the consumption of
too much sleep

The sleepless find their dreams usurp reality:
The grocery people plot revenge
The cats regrow front claws
Oxygen contains germs with fingers that
inch them down the throat

The sleepful? They awake unsure:
Who owns that quilt I love?
Did I email her this morning...or yesterday?
I miss my dreams; they thrill me more than
driving to work

The sleepless brain forces dreams onto the world
The sleepful brain's addicted to dreams

Even when I'm awake, I demand movies--
the nearest unreal substance


Jan 10, 2007

The pinnacle of conspiracies is not the Illuminati
or Free Masons, or Kennedy's removal from life
or baking bread that always lands butter side down
No, it's secret elderly after dark society

By day, they don Clark Kent goggles to mystify us
with their doddering. DeNiro was never a finer actor
than Mrs. Kittle, who claims good potatoes must have
fewer than fifteen eyes. Goats over sixty play our
daily accordians; we don't imagine them with Fenders
and Gibsons

But one night, whistling past a retirement graveyard,
I heard a rustle under the mulberry. Two lovers
had attached their bodies and ages, a naked one hundred forty one
sighing their Olympian pride at yet another 10.0.

Since then, I've attained geriatric paranoia. The other day
I overheard a toothless clergyman predict a revolution
to occur after shuffleboard, and lead by septugenerian banditos.


Jan 11, 2007

How much help is it, really?
A CD for cancer
Science says it's better than prayer from afar
which has no effect,
and I believe that, believe in doing something
the person recognizes.

Still, I feel empty as a flower pot
"Here, sorry about your breast, sorry
that your daughter now defines death as your absence
sorry I'm not a genius and can't cure you in secret
and sorry, so sorry, for my useless, sorry, sorry life"

But to you it will be sweet as fresh squeezed peaches
You'll call Rob, you'll agree I'm the momentary Kris Kringle
Your daughter will be fed stories of me along with her beets

Do I give the gift for you, or for me? Doesn't the collie, when it
drops the rabbit's corpse at the door, beg a pat on the head?


Jan 12, 2007

The Toyota's dome light is on

I first peer inside like a thief, hoping to see
the dashboard Ganesh statue, overcomer of obstacles
but there's just American-looking refuse
Finally, I knock on my neighbor's door. The young man
with the pirate face answers. Yes, it's his car. "Oh,
sorry, thank you."

I enter my apartment. It's full of heat. My shoes will dry soon
My damp cap's fabric smells like a cat
My fish's bowl lamp is lit, so I say, "Lights out, Sam," and
set his sun

I picture thousands of dome lights left on right now
all over the city. If the power grid hushed, satellites would
snap shots of a fuzzy constellation Cincinnatus. I smile at my power
I stopped a star


Jan 14, 2007
(missed a day, so here are two unreleated poems to make up for that)

1.
Mine is a paper generation

We were taught that civiliation began with the Guttenburg Bible

Music could be played by ear, but the only real music was sheet music
With a name like Schirmer or Mel Bay inscribed on the cover

Each spring, eighth graders judged each other by hair-to-earlobe coverage
pant length, and Mead binder cover. We'd decide to date because
we both liked college ruled notebooks over standard

Scientists discovered the cosmos through napkins. Chalkboards were
merely surrogate paper. They constantly shuffled through their notes
When the time came to awe their peers, they would present a "paper"

No electric devices held our art. No child drew with a mouse. We
had construction paper, and watercolor paper, and Kraft paper, and
cardboard and posterboard and currogated boxes. A little girl demanded
before a vacation drive, only a coloring book and Crayons

We modeled our worlds with paper. We flew paper airplanes, and folded
oragami giraffes. Plastic had captured hobby modelling, true, but architects
still built cities from foamboard covered with creamy paper

All reporters took notes on paper. They typed Kennedy's death, which flew
onto acres of newspaper. A thrifty executive would allow his secretary only
onion paper, which now deserves only 9,280 web site pages, decreasing daily

You weren't a man if you didn't read the paper. Our mothers could be charmed
by scented tissue carnations. I learned to write cursive on brown paper with blue
lines, which would disintigrate upon erasure using a Pink Pearl.

Sherlock Holmes captured elite criminals because they composed missives on fine staionery
which even my generation acklowleged as a class indicator. We loved stationery, and inks
and envelopes. If you wanted to impress a girl, you wrote love poems with a fountain pen
on gold parchment.

We respected our ancestors of stone writing, who spoke to us with chisels and granite
Our heads were, after all, rapped by Moses' stone tables each Sunday. But under our
covers, by flashlight, we prayed to the Chinese and the Egyptians, who mastered papyrus
They had rescued us from lives of masonry. We could now paint our history

just like the girls I knew who scribbled thier love in diaries that locked. They embedded their
souls in paper.

2.
To play Bach properly, you must deny entropy, or
at least, you must believe that life is ordered, that
the music accurately shadows the universe

In Bach is Kepler's desire; the strict music of the heaveans


Jan 15, 2007

We get the blues
Or we're having a brown study

We want clear minds
Transparent reasoning

Green with envy, yellow bellied
red faced, pale faced, gray or ashen faced

Pollack paints our our emotional portraits
Each human's skin a prism

Until the date, until the job, until the crime
the faith, the war. Then we sort and discard by shades.


Jan 16, 2007

On my driver's-side window was a tiny water droplet shaped
perfectly in a Star of David
A Hannukah miracle! except the holiday's passed
and all shapes are miraculous, my ex-wife's sister's baby may
coo over a nipple-shaped droplet, a bat may perceive a water
moth, dive, echo locate the glass and bank, its wings' wind
smudging the droplets, my neighbors may stop, remark on
the Hindi letter just there, my other neighbor's kid spots the
Spanish double l that's pronounced like "y", a pattern I
recognize, I filter, I make meaning, all droplets--and none--
are shaped by miracles


Jan 17, 2007

She bends over the tangerines like an astronomer
who cups his eye to the tiny end of a cannon-sized telescope
What fascinates her are the blemishes; some are rashes
some are tattoos, a few are wounds

She's troubled. Scientists breed out these defects
They get stock options for sponsoring that desirability is uniformity
She wonders what genetic warps businesses would desire
if all their customers were sightless


Jan 19, 2007
(missed another day, but this time I knew I was doing it. Just a blechy day, and very tired right now.)

1.
How did Will do it? Pen and candle
a heart of iron

2.
The leftover bacon, dry as its original hide
I touch the Buckminster domes of fat


Jan 20, 2007

COLORS
Red
nick my finger quartering a strawberry

Yellow
there's no crayon color for the sun

Black
her severed hocky stick on the dining table
awaiting the suture of electrical tape

Green
Maggie stoops to kiss the emerald snake

Orange
cats curled in Halloween buckets

Purple
I've often typed in the royal dye that offended Horace

Burgundy
the scotch droplet on her lower lip. she smears it to her hand. she paints it on the leather car seat.

Pink
the sunset cloudlight when you murmer against my neck


Jan 21, 2007

He's risking a drop from the rock wall
asking a lot from traction, from boots on slush
but it's his ceremony, to survey the trail
the old acreage, before setting his legs into their run

Twelve seconds along, he sights the dome to his left
It's supported by four pillars, with a poem by Wendell Berry
engraved in a spiral in the concrete base. Some night he'll
sneak in and worship poetry by flashlight and constellations

At the fork, he heads right. Always counter-clockwise to
savor the penultimate river. Apartment buildings grow on the right
mounds and willows on the left, a tan grassy shallow is frozen
after two weeks of rain, binding the weather to the soil

There seem to be thousands of mosquito icicles in the air
melted by his panting. His thighs feel thick as horses, his feet
swell in their socks. No other shoes have compressed the virgin
white blanket. If he slips, cracks his skull on a bench, he'll be lucky to live

Around the horn, a half mile, the sign advising, "No air horns"
Who would mistake this floral arena for a football stadium?
Now he flexes his fingers; his brain measures whether to shut off blood
Not yet. Not yet. Death won't trespass on him today

Eight and a half minutes, the bridge to the right like an amoebic arm
He jogs to the middle, stands, whirls once with his arms out in
awful ballet, then leans on the iron rail.. One day his gloves might freeze
there, but not today. The river flows under ice. He searches for comatose fish

White drops fall on his nose. He looks up. They're like cotton meteors
and for a few moments he tries to duck them. But he needs to run again;
his car will want brushing, its engine block stoked, its skin heated by steam
He finds his belly reacting as if he were stepping onto a stage

Because she promised to show. She'll be prompt, a fine timepiece. She'll
be hungry for French toast with marmalade. She'll surround his waist with
her furnace hands, and her mouth's vapor will arouse his throat. She'll
walk him back down to the temple, where they'll wonder about a kiss

Now he crosses the small river, on the bridge with fossils in the stones
and the cottonwoods nearby that resemble upturned women's legs, an odd
macbre farm, an image she'll thrill to. He glances up the hill to his right. She's there
waving from the rock wall. She shouts his name. It echoes between his heartbeats
Despite his pace, he feels he's running slower than snow.


Jan 23, 2007
(what's this? another skipped day? I must have thought the 21st counted for two.)

1.
Sharp Objects
The knife tip marks a comma in the bookshelf
I drop a push pin into the garbage disposal
The scissors are a whale's mouth, open to strain wrapping paper of nutrients
The boy needs a bandage after his mother's remark
The skyline, after dark, after rain, after settling my glasses
Their date was spoiled: three-prong forks are better than four-
"Spiny fish don't make good pets, dear."
His suit was cut like paper
No Hollywood ending for a blast through actual glass
The cheese smells like wet orangutan, and tastes like burnt gravel

2,
Dull Objects
A bust of the first businessman to build a scissor factory
Raw gold. What glitters brighter is the fool's version
He was no more dangerous than a moist, balsa axe
Secretly, and quietly, she drew dragons with her worn, fat pencil
The boy knew less than my handbag, and quoted his first spelling book like gospel
yet I ate his praise; he adored me better than the biplane he gaped at
The nickle in the library book. Its date is 193_
They say a corpse's eyes film over, like a fish's after its gills stop


Jan 24, 2007

Waiting for the furnace repair, I discover that a hot bath
isn't a luxury. I'm obliged to my emergency sauna, I bless
the Dracula vapor that my skin sucks for sustenance. No
other time did I grin so hard at my finger art in a bathroom mirror
except maybe when I was four and a half, but those memories--
if any--have long evaporated. Roughing my legs with the towel, less
for drying than circulation, I consider that this memory might vanish
Scientists aren't certain. Do we lose them, or lose the ability to access them?
The first is driving up to your 2nd grade house in Iowa and there's an Ameristop with good rates
The second is that certainty that past homes exist, but where are the streets?
If we could record our lives, wouldn't we end by only watching our histories? Hospitals
would lead the dying into the grave by way of memory. They'd say, "Here, Mr. Flatt.
Watch your seventh birthday while we make you comfortable. Your family
will be here soon."

Our memories are our souls. We spoon a few into books and songs and our kids. But
most die with us.

Outside the bathroom, my skin as red as lava, the moist blanket dries
leaving goosepimples. This cold is different, somehow. I worry it might not leave, that I might
not awake, that someone else will own the memory of finding me with frost on my eyelids.


Jan 25, 2007

The article's title read "Ultraviolet glow
lights up spider sex"

Should I be startled, that scientists peek
at arachnids making their two backed, hex legged
beast? I wonder, if I agree to a university sex study
and I'm filmed having sex
and I'm paid for participating, is that, legally
pornography?

Parts of the jumping spider flouresce under black light
causing a rumba betwen male and female, a sultry
disco fever that includes the girl batting her eight eyes
black as Italian olives, and scuttling away. The boy
scampers after, jiggling his appendages like stadium glow sticks

You see them, don't you? The grinning faces in lab coats? Their
palms itch, slightly at first, then like fire ants. Five minutes from now
they'll dowse the hot lights, switch on the dark, paint vaseline on their faces
and jitterbug in each other's moonlight.


Jan 28, 2007
(very bad, missed two days. Must write three today. whew!)

1.
Despite the snow, I'm as drowsy as a lion
because of the electric heater with its savanna air
Maybe the Africa gene in my capillaries is turned off
I can't walk for days among grass and gazelles, sipping water
from leaves

Instead, I crave fruit juice and snowballs, and fitting my sweatered back
into a white ground angel

2.
Round, square, rectangle (the locomotive square)
and always the compass pins, two or three, that point
not north and south, but at right angles to a cube, or maybe
on a vector to gravity

We call them faces. I think it was because of the winding holes
on the grandfathers, the holes like eyes, empty orbs accepting keys
that didn't unlock any thing, but instead wound up their time
Not the containers of the mechanisms. I mean the owners, the
creators of time

Until calendars and pyramids and stone henges and hourglesses and
clocks, we didn't have time. We head to measure it for it to be--which is
to be human. Before then, each morning bore a new sun

3.
Crab hunting never entered into her mind, at least
not crab hunting with a gun. But then, until she met Reginald
her mind had been confined to business the way yolk is held
in a shell. He cracked her. She sought sauteeing

The gun, like Reginald, was harmless. It shot a net
an homage to spiders, a string blanket that confused pincers
It was Melinda who did the killing. But lately, like a rusty slide
she found she didn't enjoy it. They lived so short, anyway, and

offered so little meat, they were hardly worth the boiling water, hardly
worth the whistling steamboat steam of death

Melinda pointed her gun. She pointed it at Reginald. She fired
His gun hand was covered is if she'd spit on it. He dropped the gun
and said, "I invented it for you, anyway. I drowned the killing in beer."
She tossed hers aside, surrounded his waist, grazed his cheek to hers

They scuttled their four legs sideways toward the house

Jan 29, 2007

"Sonnets are for sissies!" she says over Wheatabix
"And Shakespeare was a pansy ass."

My eggs are running, but not fast enough
I swab up their yellow lava with my bread, stuff
some words back into my mouth, and chew a while

A fortnight later, our bedroom stage is set, the old queen size
thrusting out into the middle, surrounded by tangerine candles
walnut date rolls, lilacs and tawney port. Snowy outside, the heat is up
demanding she lie naked on the quilt

William is in my right hand, while my left sends tremors across her thigh
Pavlov dreampt this scene, the woman submerged in love, ringing with the bell
of old words written to one woman, maybe, but also all women

I start "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,"
and then "Thy bosom is endeared wtih all hearts,"
then "That god forbid that made me first your slave,"
famously "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
finally, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"

In our homemade twilight, she provides wet stars from her eyes
With her body, she atones for her error


Jan 30, 2007
(just some phrases)

Cloak and danger
Last night's clown collaboration
His cloying sideburns
I sharpen the pencil on my molar
My favorite sweater is leaking!
Jamboree Iguanas. Two for $30
These aren't little missions. The people demand our potatoes
They order steamed lemonade with mint ice cubes
Along the lake, hungry gnats fly in cloud formations toward us
She pounded the music into him like beef
Alone with the lanterns, Melody threw water at the moon

Jan 31, 2007
(this is cheating. I wrote this on Feb 1...but I really wanted to have a full month!)

It don't seem right, when poetry
gets stuck in Language LaBrea
when we skip the progress from
"her alabaster hip"
to hip
to hippy
to hip hop

Sometimes there ain't nothin' wrong with
slamming with
the angels who slap that bass

You you

You you
in the back wearing black
at a wedding, which shouldn't work
but it's revealing, it's
revealing that I don't notice
the non-white, maybe it's because
I'm in line to the left of the bride
and groom, my sweat and thought
on the Frost I'm to read,
the Twain I've included
to speak to the assembly to this
riverboat's congregation, though the groom
and the bride aren't religious so
it's more like a group, I barely notice
you, you in the back wearing black
since in moments I must recite about roads less travelled
and quote about the brevity of life, which isn't
Frost, but Twain when he was sincere
when he was in love
my friend, the groom, is in love
my friend, the bride, is in love
but I'm not briefly in love with you until
until
after the banjo band plays, then I note
you with a mutual friend, I wonder
at your non-wedding ring
at your singleness, you, later
at the rail of the Mark Twain
alone with the river, it is chance, it's a chance
to take, that, in hindsight, was prophetic
and should have told me not to date
the woman who certainly didn't come with me
the woman who's feelings I'd break twice, the
woman who wasn't you, I should be grateful
that I don't believe in fate, I should
but I'm not
you
you said thank you after I said
you're beautiful
I didn't talk more I couldn't talk more I
had that commitment to myself
and to that other woman whose life
would soon melt because of me
and her, our choices
just like my choice to tell you you were beautiful
because it was true, because I needed to tell you
and was told, later, you needed to hear
it too.

Charlatan Past

Challenge exercise. Include the following trigger in a poem.

With him, it was never the night before, never his charlatan past.

---

Charlatan Past

You claim you were born in Cerreto,
in Italy;
I believe you--I'm not ignorant
just lustful.

I recall us hiking, and you toss off,
"My childhood was on the mountain banks."
I get the pun you think you own, I almost
scorch your ego but your
delicious lips swig water, my breasts urge
to become the canteen.

"He told me he could read seven languages,
including Croation." My girlfriend is flushed. "He
had a book in Croation. He read me a poem. Of course,
I can't read Croation."
"I can," I state, which flatlines her heart. "He can't."

Another day she prompts "Is he
good?"

I ponder that one. I make a list of his assertions:
* He used to work for Microsoft, in research
* His grandfather taught him to fly a biplane
* The ocean has mostly blind fish
* Jesus was probably born in Ariel, not Bethlehem
* He learned to hold his breath from an Indian fakir
* If I ever get sick, call him first, doctors are idiots

"Why did you dump him?" she asks over peanut butter tarts.
"I got tired of sharing," I say.
She blushes, her fingers surround an invisible crotch, as if
I didn't know.

"I get it," she tells me a month later, post-Him. "I wrote in my diary,
last night, 'He thinks I'm stupid. He didn't realize my dad was a marine.'"

Alone with my pet frog, with my TV, my diary, my door mat, my pen,
I reread last month's entry:
"With him, it was never the night before, never his charlatan past."

OCTOBER LEAVES
Only Ray Bradbury
Understands October leaves.


BIRD LEAVES
Two hundred black birds
Fly in a cyclone
Like burnt, organic leaves.


PRESSED LEAF
She doesn't know
It's crumbling inside her blank book
Because she doesn't check
And, she doesn't write.


LATENT LEAVES
Spring! The buds
Contain becoming leaves.


KIDS IN LEAVES
We realized hours later
That our raking had hidden
The red headed boy.


LEAVES IN KIDS
Happen when they're hungry.


TENATIOUS LEAF
Even with snowflakes
Tapping it
It says
"I shall not
Fall."


LAST TREE LEAF
When its tenacity fails.


TEA LEAVES
Dumped like roach bits
Onto the ivory saucer--
My future, she says, is
Not going well.


LEAVES ON TABLES
Are not real leaves
But make me giggle
When they fold down
Accidentally.


X-RAYED LEAVES
I said your hand's veins
Were like x-rayed leaves.
You smiled like acid
And paid the bill.


LEAF FALL
Air that's still as
Aunt Mary's eyes
At the hospital before the nurse
Covered her.

My ears imagine
The stem snap.

It drops
Like a moon feather.


LEAF FALL (version 2)
Air that's still as
Aunt Mary's eyes
Before the nurse
Covers her.

Through her window
Her dog-loved maple.

My ears imagine
The leaf's stem snap.
It drops like a moon feather.


LEAF FALL (version 3, should be retitled)
Your eyes
still.
Your maple's leaves
still.
The sheet
still
After the nurse covers your face;
It should billow.


SHOWER
Illegal paper bits
From the buildings like trees
In a great, concrete and glass forest
Surround the shouting
That makes a glorious wind
I'm a hero!

Work has slowed down, so I should be writing more. This week will be filled with poetry and fiction. To start things off is an imitation of poet Kenneth Koch, specifically his very long poem In Bed.

Mine's entitled Leaves.

One thing I miss about the blog format I was using for this site is the chance to just write without having an aim. So, I'm adding a web journal, and letting myself write about writing, and experiment as the mood strikes me. No commenting allowed yet.

I love words. I love putting them together in odd, striking ways. Corralling them into poems and prose is where the effort is. Words are my paint, and I can splatter with abandon, but that doesn't make the result as Starry Night.

In simple flues I find birds' nests, but not birds' eggs. Why not? Some avian tragedy? The elimination of their race through soot? The species' brick debacle?

See? Fun, might lead somewhere, but mostly it's words for words' sake.

When I was in school, I learned that a possessive on a word that ends in "s" should get the apostrophe after the "s", but no second "s".

The library books' titles were all about hermit crabs.
I'm not sure what to make of Charles' writing.

I wonder what's taught today. Even at that time, I vaguely recall (or is it a self-implanted memory?) that always appending with apostrophe "s" was acceptable, just not what we were to do.

I examined the tarot cards's images, knowing he'd hidden the microdot somewhere.
"Hey! Give back Lucas's Terrible X-Ray Gun of Insanity!"

There are two things I like about not always appending the "s". It reduces the number of letters used. And it looks cool.

What I like about appending is that it's a no-brainer. That, right there, may tip the lazy scales.

They called him Marcus the Great because he told them to. Marcus could tell the other kids to do anything and they would. One day he told Kelly McFarland to dunk her own pigtails into an inkwell he'd bought just for the purpose (and that had cost him $1.25 and three days of searching). She just smiled sweetly at him and said, "Sure thing, Marcus. Got a piece of poster board?"

"What for?"

"So I can draw your picture with my pigtail brushes, silly. I want to practice on your dimple."

Marcus smirked and said, "How about if I tape together two sheets of notebook paper?"

Kelly pouted, but only for a moment, then said, "Okay!"

That was last year, second grade, and Marcus still had the picture she'd made. He also had--he was certain of this--faint red marks on his bottom from his mother's bare hands. Mrs. McFarland had called that night, while Marcus was working on a model rocket that he was sure could transport a cockroach to the top floor of the bank where Mr. Grather worked. All the kids wanted to do something to get back at Mr. Grather, ever since he'd had the playground torn down and turned into an old people's walking park with tennis courts and a garden. Grather Grassy Knoll, it was named. Marcus had asked his mother what a knoll was, and she'd said, "Look it up," as usual, but Marcus loved the game. He found out a knoll was a small, rounded hill. It could also be called a hilloc, which he thought was a funny word and made sure to use it every day for the next week. "Mom, I want to have a picnic on that hilloc," or "Hey, everybody, let's go play on Punk Wizard's hilloc after school!"

Punk Wizard was two years older than Marcus, but still called him The Great as long as Marcus got all the kids to call him Punk Wizard. Some kids didn't even know that Punk's real name was Randal Matthias Rosenlieber. Punk had the permanent high score at the bowling alley's Cowboy Shoot game. That's the one where you're a cowboy and you point a huge plastic gun at targets that pop up and when you pull the trigger you either hit or miss. To reload, you have to pump your gun down then up once. The reason Punk's high score was permanent was because, for one thing, it was very high and probably unbeatable. Also, almost no one played Cowboy Shoot anymore. And, finally, Punk had taken apart the back of the machine and somehow fixed it so that all the remaining games' target values would be one-third what his was. Wild Bill Hickock couldn't have beat him.

It was Punk who mentioned the cat to Marcus.

"It ain't gonna make it, Marc old boy," said Punk. Punk was the only person on the planet who could get away with calling Marcus "Marc". This was not--as most grown ups assumed--because Punk, besides owning the permanent Cowboy Shoot high score, could bloody any kid's nose in the current and surrounding neighborhoods, even the older kids. No, it was because one day he and Marc and Joanie Slawson were playing Kick the Bear (the only fun game that can be played with just three people, and also requires a girl) when Punk's mother hollered at them to be more quiet, please, she was watching The Thin Man. Punk immediately stopped being the bear, walked to his closet, pulled out a top hat and walking stick, put them on and said, "Ms. Slawson, it is such a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last. Marc old boy, where have you been hiding this gem?"

Marcus and Joanie stared, then laughed, then tried not to laugh because they didn't want Mrs. Rosenlieber to come in and make them leave before she fed them butterscotch cookies. Punk twirled the cane once, satisfied at his accomplishment of startling them with his high acting ability, then put cap and cane back into the closet, went to all fours and emitted a humble, "Grrr. Hungry bear." Joanie and Marcus raced forward with their requisite scarves with which they tried to "kick" the bear.

"What do you mean," asked Marcus. "They feed it, right?"

"Sure, sure. Milk and honey and lamb meat every day, if you believe Mr. Hudson, but Judy Miller says it's just dry cat food. Feedin' ain't the problem, Marc. The cat's got magical powers, and nobody but me has any notion of that fact."

"Uh huh. Magical powers. Punk, I'm the only magician in this town and don't you forget it. Who got Filipia Carlson to give you a kiss under the basketball hoop last winter? Hmm?"

"You did."

"And, who organized the biggest boycot of cornbread with jalapeño peppers this nation has ever seen, leading to the serving of only regular or honey cornbread in all school cafeterias throughout the county?"

"You did."

"May I query, Mr. Wizard, who kept a certain incident pertaining to a white dress shirt with French cuffs colliding with a bottle of grape juice from becoming family knowledge...."

"Okay, okay," said Punk, a little nervously. Marcus had never told him what became of the shirt. Part of "The Great's" powers came from his holding items such as this in reserve until an occasion demanded their resurrection.

"Good. So. What magic do you imagine this flea-bitten kitten to possess?"

Punk looked at Marcus steadily. "Say what you want. Tie my tongue with barbed wire. But I've seen it with my own eyes. The cat can walk through its cage."

"You mean it can walk inside its cage?"

"No! A worm could do that, if it had legs. I mean it can walk through the bars."

Marcus took a deep breath. "You mean it can slip through--"

"Marcus, my lad, you are a few seconds from making a great mistake in your Great career."

Marcus was quiet. He'd seen what happened to noses whose owners felt they could continue bantering Punk Wizard.

"I have seen this cat step at a leisurely pace up to bars that a boneless bat couldn't squish between and, without breaking stride, continue past. Invariably, the cat is interested in food that it could not otherwise reach. On Thursday, it was a cricket."

"I see," said Marcus. "Of course, I'd like to witness this phantom act, but as you have seen it yourself, I don't get your main point. Why won't the cat make it?"

"Markdown's coming."

"Ah."

They were both quiet a few seconds.

"It's happening next Saturday. All animals that've been there more than three months."

Marcus pulled a die out of his pocket and rolled it on the wood floor. He did this when he needed to think. One time, in March, he'd rolled the number 3 seventeen times in a row.

"Why won't someone buy it??

"It's scrawny, Marc. Like someone tied it up with shoelaces and never untied it. It's got a gold eye, and a green one. That right there made Olanda say 'Ew' and refuse to pet it."

Olanda was Punk's sister, a year older than Marcus. She loved every animal except praying mantises and could never explain why except to say, "I just swear it's...looking at me...with those beady green eyes...ew, gross!" For Olanda to show disgust at this cat meant one thing.

"It's a goner. Why tell me? It'll get out. A magic cat doesn't seem to be in much danger."

"I've seen what happens, Marc. The cat'll never know what's coming. They feed the markdown cats and dogs the best wet food a dollar will buy, and put powder in the food. They take the sleeping animals to the vet. Marc, boyo, those pups don't awake."

Marcus pocketed the die and said, "Got any chips?"

"Yeah," said Punk, "and milk."

A grim expression crossed Marcus The Great's face as they headed for the kitchen. "There'd better be more than one glass full. This problem demands my full faculties."

* * *

Joanie Slawson was Marcus's best friend after Punk. She was the youngest of five, and her other siblings were all boys, and every Friday afternoon at lunch for as long as Marcus could remember, Joanie would drink an entire can of orange soda in a single long pull, smash the can between her knees, pound it like a gavel on the cafeteria table's Formica top, and shout "I...hate...brothers!!!"

This seemed to have the desired result. The rest of the time, Joanie got along with her brothers and just about everyone else, except Pattie Nett, with whom she'd had a feud since kindergarten over the stealing of a boyfriend. No one could find out who was the supposed amour, and Marcus privately expressed doubts that Joanie or Pattie knew, either (in fact, he thought there might not have ever been a boyfriend, and that they just plain hated each other), but the two avoided contact like snails and salt.

Joanie liked acting like Marcus's older sister and bossed him around whenever she could. Marcus figured that being a year older than Marcus, yet being the youngest in her family, she needed the outlet. He liked Joanie because she could always be depended upon to support any of his ideas that she liked, and to not interfere with the ones she didn't. This tacit contract had only been broken once, just before a planned event involving chocolate cream pies, mouse traps, and the city police department's mobile crime unit. Marcus, in a rare show of humility, admitted later that it wasn't such a great idea, after all, and thanked her for telling his mom.

They sat in Marcus's back yard, by the stone bunnies that his mom loved. Marcus detailed his plan for rescuing the cat. He was very thorough, especially the section involving thirteen smoke bombs and, if necessary, a fire extinguisher and a jar of salad oil.

"Well," she said, "it's like this, Marcus. Your plan would definitely work, and sounds like fun, but..."

Marcus pre-bristled. "But what?"

"Well. Why not just buy the cat?"

"Because...because...."

And that was as far as he got. Marcus's Uncle Max always said, "Sonny, let me tell ya, there's no need of replacing the engine when spark plugs are four for five dollars."

Marcus waited until Mr. Hudson posted the markdown sign. According to Judy Miller, who was the only baby sitter in town that Marcus trusted, the animals on markdown only stayed that way for a week. He spoke with his mother that evening after dinner.

"Marcus Mallory Jeremiah Lincoln, you will neither buy a cat nor bring one into this house. You will not do so because you are too young to care for it. You will not do so because I am too busy to care for it. Finally, you will not do it because I finally own furniture that is capable of surviving a nine-year-old boy, but not a cat of any age. I am in high hopes that my preceding sentences have been clear."

"But mom! It's only sixty-nine cents!"

"While that certainly is a bargain for, let us say, a loaf of good bread or a night at the Plymouth Lake Operetta And Fish Fry, it is not--and you should note the emphasis--a factor in my decision."

"But--"

"Son."

Marcus stopped. The barrier beyond which he could not cross had been reached. When his mother said "son" in that tone, indeed when his mother uttered such a short admonition, he knew the only possible result from further argument would be three nights of lightly steamed cauliflower for dessert. Magic cat or not, some penalties were not to be incurred. He went to his room to think.

The problem facing Marcus is one that faces us all, at one time or another. At least, if we aspire to live good lives and face ourselves in our mirrors each morning, the problem should occur. It is this: sometimes you must do something that is right without disappointing those you love, and yet you know they will disapprove. Many a spanking has been inflicted on little boys who didn't properly resolve this dilemma. Marcus had been spanked exactly three and a half times, and wasn't going for four.

So, he sat in his room like a miniature Quixote, and brooded, and brooded, and brooded. And after all this brooding, and a slice of green apple pie, he had the solution.

* * *

The solution was somewhat simple, if indirect, and involved what he'd heard his teacher Mrs. Philips call "suspension of disbelief". Marcus wasn't sure why you'd make yourself not believe something, but he figured if there was ever a chance to try it, now was that chance.

He must speak to the cat.

Now, you might think this would be an easy thing for a boy who had once commanded that fifteen ants be put to death for their insidious assault on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (The fact that he'd left the sandwich for an hour to play basketball was conveniently ignored as evidence of cause and effect.) But it is one thing to say, "Vile insects!" It is another to stand before a small cage and quietly explain the facts of upcoming life and death to a stray.

"Just what is it you're doing, Young Mr. Lincoln?"

Marcus hated it when Mr. Hudson called him that. Mr. Hudson was under the misimpression that he was clever with children. It wasn't the phrase that rankled Marcus. If, for instance, Mr. Tholany called him that, it would be fine. Mr. Tholany was teaching Marcus to play chess. They'd sit in the park while mom was walking the retrievers and Mr. Tholany would explain the right moves, the classic openings, the basic strategies of "control the center, develop rapidly, protect your king", and tell stories about how the town was when he was a boy. It was during these conversations that Marcus often did his best thinking, and had begun to get an inkling that there had been boys before him--and possibly boys to follow--who had been (or would be) greater than he. Mr. Tholany had probably been one of those boys, but instead of being jealous, Marcus was merely envious and enjoyed a warm sensation of knowledge that genius didn't end when each king was tipped over, but instead returned for another game.

"Just talking to the cat, sir. My mom says I can't have one."

"Well, that's just fine, young man. Can't always have what we want, can we? But I'm sure that nice cat will find a good home. You wait and see. In a week or so, that cat won't be here and you won't have to worry about him anymore."

"Her, Mr. Hudson."

"Eh?"

Only people like Mr. Hudson said, "eh".

"The sign says it's a girl cat, Mr. Hudson."

"Ah, so it does. And spayed, too, that's the way we do things here, no sense in having even more cats that nobody...er...well, that is, it's just better for everyone...tell you what, Young Mr. Lincoln. You stop at the counter and I'll give you a nickel for a free monster gumball. Since you're treating that cat so kindly."

He walked away. Marcus would take the nickel and gumball, but only to penalize Mr. Hudson. If he couldn't get the cat to understand, then it wouldn't be here in a week, all right.

"Mew," said Marcus, hoping to get the cat's attention by speaking in its native tongue. "Mew."

As Punk had said, the cat was scrawny. Its chalkboard black fur had resisted Judy's attempts, and was clumped like, funnily, a pussy willow's buds on its head and back. The combination of green and gold eyes was distracting, to say the least. When the cat looked at Marcus, he had an eerie feeling that it knew his name.

"Cat, it's like this," began Marcus, and spoke to that cat as he would to his best pal about why throwing rocks at stop signs is fun, but throwing them at pigeons only seems fun, because a stop sign doesn't know the difference, and a pigeon's just trying to eat something.

"...and so, I know you're getting fed in here, and I know you've been hoping for a good home, and I don't want to hurt your feelings, but the only people who know you're a magic cat are Punk and me. You know how grown ups are, they won't believe you can walk through your cage. They'd want to know why you don't just get out. They wouldn't stop to think about where you've probably been and where you want to be and where you'd have to go. Punk can't take you home, either, because they've got three dogs, two mongoose and four sheep. I don't know why a cat would make a difference, but Punk's mom said she'd rather have a flying iguana than a cat, so I guess she just doesn't like cats. Punk's holding out hope for an iguana, now, but I think it's not going to happen. So, anyway, I'll come back every day and keep telling you this but you gotta leave before Sunday because the store's closed on Sunday. But...the vet's open."

Today was Monday. Marcus repeated his visit Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The most the cat did was edge up to the cage and rub its nose against his finger tip.

"Mr. Hudson?" said Marcus on the way out.

"Yes, lad?"

Marcus put a handful of change on the counter. "Here's sixty-nine cents. I can't take the cat home, but will you please keep it here? Please?"

Marcus the Great could command children from other countries, if necessary, to do his bidding. He had once required a fine Spanish boy to send a few of his home country's stamps to complete a school art project. The boy, after a couple of exchanged letters (Marcus was not allowed to use the computer for email), sent the stamps with a cheery, "Anything for mi hombre, Marcus." Marcus could make fifth grade football players read poetry aloud at birthday parties. He could join bitter enemies Rhonda Burke and Floyd Hendricks together for one evening so that Rhonda could teach Floyd how the times tables worked, and how to figure out all twenty other math questions and not have to repeat fourth grade. He sometimes felt he could move stars, if they were young enough. But with grown ups, he was just a boy.

Mr. Hudson pushed the change back toward Marcus and said, "I'm sorry, son. I can't take care of every stray. I wish I could. Once a month, I want to quit this job, and that's the way it's been for thirty-two years."

Marcus took back his money. For the first and last time, he understood and felt sorry for Mr. Hudson.

On Monday, Marcus visited the pet store, and found the cat's cage occupied by a white, fluffy thing that was being petted by four girls. He turned and left, but just outside the entrance Mr. Hudson stopped him.

"Young man. Did you have anything to do with that cat getting out? I came in on Sunday and that cat you've been going on about wasn't in its cage. No sign of it. Tell the truth, now, or I'm calling your mother."

Marcus had learned a new phrase lately, and did his best to emulate it. He “turned a baleful eye” on Mr. Hudson.

"I don't lie. I didn't help the cat escape."

Mr. Hudson didn't seem satisfied, but just said, "Well. Okay then. I'd better not find out any differently."

"How did it get out?"

"Eh?"

"How did it get out of its cage?"

Mr. Hudson sometimes forgot his manners. He turned to go back inside, saying "Hell if I know. Damned cage was still locked."

That night, Marcus sat on his back porch drinking a lemonade and reading the "T-V" book from the encyclopedia. It was an old encyclopedia, but Marcus figured the most important stuff probably hadn't changed much, and he liked the way the book smelled. He'd told Punk and Joanie about the cat escaping. Punk just said, "Told ya," and Joanie asked, "What? What did he tell you?", but Marcus wouldn't say. There are some secrets to be shared only among men.

Out of the shade, from Mrs. Wilkin's yard, walked an animal. Marcus noticed it, figured it was a possum, then realized it was too small. He lowered his book and watched. The animal moved slowly yet steadily. It was like watching your shadow appear and disappear on a cloudy day while you stand at the bus stop. Like a ghost, almost. The dark form made its way across the lawn and paused at the pine fence that separated Marcus's back yard from the Kincaid's. It turned its head, and the porch light gleamed off its eyes. Green and gold. Marcus held his breath. He held it as long as he could, which was forty-seven seconds. When he let it out in a whispered whistle, the cat turned away and strolled through the painted wood.

Two weeks is too long.

-------------

Cindy slipped in the quarter, cranked the handle, and caught the jack in mid air. Hospey's Drug Emporium was the only place anywhere that had a jack machine, and Cindy was determined to collect all eighteen colors. When she did, she could play against Mrs. Hospey, who wore diamond tipped jack earings given to her by some Cadillac dealer she'd dated in 1957.

"Had a head filled with dead fish, but he sure did like to spend money on pretty girls. And that was me, as I said."

The Wisconsin All State Jack and Hoola Hoop Competition was only a month away. This year, Cindy was riding with Jeff Lansing, who could juggle Nerf balls while gyrating seven hoops around his shiny black waist. Everybody thought they were dating, but Jeff only talked about Menisha Calhoun. Menisha was on swim team, and had filled out more than the other girls. Cindy knew that Menisha only talked to Jeff because she liked the attention, but with the competition so close it wouldn't help anyone to dash his dreams of a poolside kiss.

"Cindy, how many left?" asked Mrs. Hospey from behind her.

"Just three."

"Uh huh. Well, I've been practicing. Think I might have to take you down a peg. Folks say you've been boasting."

Cindy looked at the dusty floorboards. "No, ma'am. I just think I can beat you, is all."

Mrs. Hospey turned away. "Hm. Well, no harm in thinking. It's what the Good Lord gave you a skull for, to hold all them thoughts."

Stuffing the jack into her pink purse, Cindy ran outside into the sun and dust of Orange River, population thirteen hundred and a half.

Obviously I'm taking a break from Cromwell and Boone. Who knows for how long?

Getting a late start tonight, so I'll come up with an exercise and not write long. Let's just start with a list and some phrases, Bradbury style, and see what happens.

His eyes bled tears.
Dark and raining.
A drawer of Halloween makup.
Steel string guitar.
Moon Pie.
What if our personalities could be stolen from us? Who would do this? Would this be the explanation for thinking we've gotten to know someone, then that person changes? Some specific parts of the personality are leeched away by some virus.
The golden doorbell.
A clock getting wound at 2:31am.
The air conditioner turns off. It's not like a vacuum cleaner, but instead like being in a space craft and all the air whooshes out and all that's left is vacuum.
Mystery raisin.
Clever frogs hug the mainland.
"It's never just their hairs I save."
Letter Carriers of the Midwest
Seeds in my pocket.
Leverage.
There's nothing like falling out of love face first onto life's concrete.
The Super Livery Stable
If it wasn't for next week, what would I do with my Snicker's bar?

He made sure the concert hall door closed gently behind him, then walked out the front entrance and to a little garden he knew was nearby. The sky was about fifteen minutes from twilight, the west showing a tinge of pink as if someone had scrubbed rose chalk on the clouds.

The symphony was supposed to be a break, take their minds off of Lou for a while. But the piece--something by Faure--was making him fidget. He whispered to Aggie that he'd be outside near the fountain, and would she find him at intermission? He knew she'd say yes, but if her eyes had said "No, I need you here," then he'd have just gone to the restroom and returned. She seemed to understand, smiled and touched his forearm once, then turned back to listen.

The air was moist more than hot, around eighty degrees, not quite a typical June day where the temperature normally got above ninety. He walked to the right side of the building, onto the lawn, then a path covered in loose shale. The garden wasn't large, and had a fountain in the center with some cherub, probably Cupid, spouting water into the air. He sat on one of the stone benches around the fountain and stared into the water. There were no goldfish or koi, but there were pennies, dimes and nickles. He wondered if they used the money on the concert hall, or gave it to charity, or just bought a bottle of champagne occasionally, not caring how people meant the money to be used.

Something caught his attention, out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a mashed up Coke can just under a bush. Suddenly aggravated, he strode to the bush, picked up the trash and then tried to remember where the nearest garbage can was.

"I was just about to get that, myself. Thank you! I don't know why anyone would want to litter here, with a trash can right in front of the building."

He snapped his head around. He hadn't heard anyone approach, but then again he wasn't noticing things very well lately. A brunette woman stood ten feet away, smiling at him. She wore a pale, red dress and pearls, and was a little heavy. She was holdling an ivory colored purse that was larger than the clutch style most women took to a concert.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to surpise you. I came out here to wait for the second half. I just got here and they won't let you go in until intermission, unless you've already been inside. That's too bad, because I love the little pieces in the first half, especially the Dvorak. But the Stravinksy is going to be wonderful, since they're doing the original 1910 version of the Firebird. Most performances are of the 1919 version."

"Oh," he said, and smiled politely.

"I'm sorry. I'm disturbing you, aren't I? I can leave. I'll even take that ugly can with me."

"No, no. I apologize. There's no reason to leave. I'm just waiting for my wife."

"You mean she's inside, and you're out here? Are you not a concert goer?"

He didn't really want to talk to anyone...and yet, this was better than waiting for his phone to ring with news from the hospital.

"I like concerts just fine, but I just needed a break. What did he change in the other version?"

"Stravinksy? Oh, not much. He changed it again in 1945, but that was so he could keep his copyright. Smart guy. I always think of him as the musical Picasso. What were they playing when you left?"

"Faure something."

Her eyes lit up. "The Pavane! I absolutely love that piece. So lyrical, not quite sad, not quite happy, you couldn't really dance to it, but would like to try. I just love the way the melody gets passed from the flute to the violin to the orchestra and back. Oh. There I go again. And you left because you didn't like it. I'm sorry, I'm kind of a talker."

He smiled. "That's okay. I'm sure it's a nice piece. Too quiet for me. Is the Firebird quiet?"

"In some places, but it's hugely loud in other places. Do you know much about reading music? Do you know about beating in four or three?"

"A little. My wife insisted I and the kids learn to waltz."

"I like her already. My name's Vicki." She held out her hand, which he shook. "Martin," he said, "Do you want to sit down?" He gestured to the bench.

"Oh, thanks. This fountain is one of my favorite places in the whole city."

Martin was still holding the can, and set it beside him so he'd remember it. Vicki took out a quarter, mumbled something and threw it into the fountain with a splash.

"There. That should help pay for a french horn."

"Is that what they do with the money?"

"Hmm? Yes, there's a fund for buying instruments for the poorer schools. It's not much, but every bit helps since music programs get so little funding."

"That's better than champagne," said Martin. Vickie looked at him, puzzled. He shrugged. "I thought maybe they just had a party with the money."

"Oh. No. I'm on the board, and if that started happening I'd have something to say about it."

I bet you would, thought Martin, then he said, "So, what about four and three?"

"Oh!" Vicki laughed, "What a good memory! Well, toward the end of the Firebird there's this great section that's all in seven. I mean, you have seven beats per measure, like this..." and she sang "one two three four five six seven one two three four five six seven" to what he assumed was the music he'd be hearing in about twenty minutes. "Isn't that wonderful?"

"I'll listen for it, but to be honest I probably won't know it even happened."

"Ah," she said with a wise smile, "but that's just the beauty of it. You won't notice. It sounds exactly the way it's supposed to. It sounds easy."

He nodded and looked at the rippling water in the fountain. Vicki was quiet...something Martin had begun wondering if it were possible. He noticed the traffic sounds nearby, and again marveled that the concert hall shut out the world so well. Aggie had once tried to explain the design and some of the accoustic theory. He finally said that he was just glad it worked. She teased him for months about knowing more chemistry than anyone within three states, but having no room in his brain for anything else. He always corrected her, saying "There's room for my family." That earned him a kiss each time.

"You keep playing with your phone," said Vicki. "But you don't strike me as the nervous type. If you need to call someone, I can leave."

Martin realized he'd been turning the phone over and over, putting it in his suit jacket pocket and taking it out again. It was set to vibrate, and sometimes he wouldn't notice it if his jacket wasn't against him.

"I'm waiting for a call."

"Oh. Well, if I'm in the way, just tell me. I don't get offended easily. I always say I should either be a politician or an umpire."

Martin muttered, "Or a doctor."

"Hmm?"

"Oh, nothing. I said 'or a doctor'. That's who I'm waiting for. I was just remembering that I was kind of hard on him today, and he just took it. Like water off a duck's back."

"What's wrong, if you don't mind my asking?"

He didn't mind. He just didn't want to talk about it. But there was no reason not to say what was going on.

"My son was in a swimming accident. He slipped and hit his head, and now he's in a coma. It's been four days. The doctor--the one I mentioned--said we should get away for a few hours, that they'd call the minute there was any change. I told him...well, I used what my wife likes to call 'rainbow phraseology'."

"Colorful language," said Vicki.

"Right. Not many people get that. Anyway, cooler heads prevailed and I know he was right. So, here I am. Getting away."

"I'm sorry. I hope your son gets better soon. Have they said--anything? Do they know what to expect? I...this is terrible, I'm getting tongue tied. Here you are worried about your boy and I'm thinking about my daughter and how I'd feel in your place. I suppose I'd go to a concert, too, if I had to go anywhere."

He nodded, then remembered she'd asked him a question. "They say he's in no danger from a clot or hemorrhaging. This happens a lot more than I thought. He could come out of it any time...or never. The longer it takes, the more likely there's brain damage. I can't believe how well Aggie's held up. We've called our little girl every day. Thank God there's a friend we trust to take care of her."

"How old are your daughter and son? Just those two?"

He nodded. "She's five. He's nine."

"My Amelia is twelve."

"My kids' names are Rita and Lou."

They were silent again for a few minutes. The western sky was turning that muddy gray that's only beautiful in sunsets.

"I told him not to run," said Martin.

Vickie nodded, saying nothing.

"You worry something like that will happen, but you don't think you'll see it just a dozen feet away. It was...instant. He was running. I looked up and noticed and was about to yell at him again, and then his whole body just crumpled into the pool and I saw his head hit...I heard it...."

He began taking deep breaths. He wasn't going to do this in front of a stranger. He needed Aggie. Just five more minutes.

"Lou," mused Vicki, as if she hadn't noticed. "I don't hear that name often. It reminds me of Lou Gehrig. I've always like that name."

"Thanks," said Martin tightly. "He was named after my father. Louis. Aggie changed her mind at the last minute. She was going to name him Arthur."

"Like the king?"

Martin laughed--finally--and wiped from his eyes the beginning of what waited for his wife. "No, not the king. The Dudley Moore character."

"You're kidding."

"No. My hand on a stack of Bibles. She loved that movie. I tried to talk her out of it, but she was the one with a baby growing inside her, morning sickness, and all the rest of it. You don't argue with that, you know? She stuck with her guns, though, the second time."

"Let me guess. Rita Hayworth?"

"That's right."

"Aggie's star rises in my horizon. I like her. You're very lucky."

"Yeah. You're right, I am. But I don't feel so lucky, right now."

"No, I wouldn't either."

He glanced at her. "You just reminded me of something. About a week ago, Lou asked me, while we were out on the deck, how many stars I could see in the sky. It was overcast, so I said none, they were hidden by the clouds. Then he looks at me as somber and serious as a baby Buddha and says, 'Well, how many stars can a cloud see?'"

Vickie chuckled. "What did you say to that one?"

"I said I'd have to do some research and get back to him in a couple of days. Then he had the accident and...well, I'm just waiting for him to wake up...so I can tell him the answer."

Vickie nodded and said quietly, "I bet he's anxious to find out."

Martin smiled at her. "Yeah. Thanks. We're anxious, too."

Her eyes focues beyond him. "Well, speaking of, this must be Aggie."

Martin felt his wife's hands on his shoulders. Again, he hadn't heard anything. He turned his head and saw the question in her eyes. He shook his head. She kissed him on the top of his head, then reached her hand out to Vicki. "Thanks for keeping my husband company." Aggie shook her hand and said, "I'm sorry to hear about your son. I hope he recovers right away. I think your husband has been waiting for you, anyway, so I'll just leave you two alone."

This made things right with Aggie, who, though never jealous, was as protective as the next woman.

"No," she and Martin said simultaneously. They laughed, then Martin said, "You stay, Vickie. I need to go inside, anyway. It looked like they had some good chocolate treats."

"I can vouch for them," said Vicki. "I hope you both enjoy the Firebird."

"Yeah. Thanks for the music lesson."

Martin stood and walked away with Aggie, arm in arm. Vickie could see that she was supporting him this time, but that he'd be doing the same for her later. The circles under her eyes showed she hadn't slept well.

The sun had almost set. A half dozen white points of light--the first stars--shown through the hazy clouds. Vickie pulled another quarter from her purse, whispered a new request, and tossed it into the fountain. She then picked up the can that Martin had forgotten and left the garden.

"We have to find that ostrich."

Melinda's nearly pinpoint heels snapped at the sidewalk. Reginald was moving very quickly for a man who wasn't sure of his destiny. "If it somehow escaped from the zoo, someone needs to know how to handle it. If it's not a zoo animal, we'll need the police."

Cromwell snapped as much as her heels. "The police? Why the hell should they care about a big bird. Unless you mean the Sesame Street police."

Boone's reply was, as always, unruffled, a quality that Cromwell had seen in the most seasoned corporate negotiators and a few members of the UN. It aggravated her. He had no right to that attitude. It was as wasted on him as fur petticoats would be on a London streetwalker.

"An ostrich isn't a pet. It's either a farm animal, or a zoo animal. We're in downtown Cincinnati. There's no reason for an ostrich to be here."

"And just how do you know that?"

"I'm a member of the AOA."

"Away from what?" asked Cromwell, and immediately realized she sounded like a buffoon. She imagined eviscerating Boone, and felt better.

"The American Ostrich Association. I'm a scholarly member, but I've spent some time with the birds." He turned left, and into an office building. "Somewhere in here, I think."

They walked up to the Information Kiosk, where Reginald asked if anyone had come into the building with a Somali ostrich. The boy at the desk stared at Boone, then at Cromwell, who recognized that this was a lad who needed her special brand of reason.

"Listen kid, you've got three seconds to answer my question: Have you seen someone with a bird as big as that security guard heading this way? Don't wonder about it! Answer!"

"No sir--I mean, ma'am!"

The look the fellow received from Melinda kept him from a good night's sleep for two weeks.

"Come on, Boone."

He didn't move. "We're going up. Henry?" he continued, addressing the guard, "which floor is Mr. Mathiesson on?"

"Fourteenth floor, Mr. Boone."

"Fine. Have you seen anyone in the building with an ostrich?"

"Uh, no sir, but I'll keep an eye out. And thanks for the coloring books. The kids love them. Keeps them out of trouble when we're driving to my sister's."

"I'll bring The Lone Ranger next time."

Boone headed straight toward the elevators, Cromwell rushing to catch up.

"Are you some kind of social leprechaun, pulling coins from your information pot of gold when you feel like it? Just how do you know that guard? Who's Mathiesson? Why the hell did you let me yell at that kid?"

"Leprechauns hide gold. I helped Henry get a loan to pay for his kids' hospital bills. Mr. Mathiesson is the president of Stanley Mortgage, one of our best accounts. And you needed to yell at someone besides me for a few seconds."

They stepped inside the elevator, Cromwell itching to say the meanest, vilest vituperation she could come up with. But all she could think of was, "Ostriches are cowards. I hate any animal that buries its head in the sand."

"That's a lie," said Reginald, mildy.

"Oh yeah? You mean they don't bury their heads? Everyone knows that. You mean they aren't cowards? You defending your own kind, Boone?"

"They don't bury their heads. Pliny the Elder got that wrong. They aren't cowards. A ostrich can kill a young lion with its hind legs, which can kick with five hundred pounds per square inch of force. And I'm not the same species."

Melinda snorted. Then Reginald said, "But none of those were the lie I meant."

We pause now, kind reader, for the introduction of a new character. It has been with us since Herbert the incident went on his way after seeing that Cromwell and Boone were, indeed, the best thing that ever happened to each other. Herbert wasn't unmindful of the responsiblity of introducing two people, but he knew that the care and feeding of tumultuous adults wasn't his bag. So, he left it to an expert.

Our continous and invisible third wheel is named Sam, and is that wonderous thing that people refer to in the third person, never realizing that there is a real being involved. Sam is neither male nor female, but since modern English hasn't caught up with modern gender roles, I'll be switching back and forth between "him" and "her", not giving in to the questionable use of "s/he", nor the agony of "he/she".

Sam is, in one sense, a rainbow connecting our two pots of gold into one arc-welded structure. In short--though it's too late for that--Sam is a relationship.

There are one third as many relationships in this universe as there are things to relate. Or it may be one fifth. No one knows for sure, and it depends on the number and nature of the relationships. Most relationships are fairly dry fellows (or ladies, but that's the last time I take time out to make it clear that relationships are really neuter and that language simply must evolve), perfectly satisified handling the ratio of twenty-two to seven, or the love of a young boy for his tabby cat. But when it comes to relationships that handle the interplay between humans--well, there are few more sophisticated, fun loving, brave beings in all the cosmos. Except, strangly, for the relationships that manage the connections of spring grass blades and push-style lawn mowers. That's a delicate job that almost no one qualifies for. Sam interviewed once, and was rejected on the grounds that he wasn't sensitive enough to the needs of some blades of grass to stand tall while others got cut at their prime.

At first he was disappointed, but within the last few days he realized he'd found his true calling.

Cromwell and Boone were a glorious undertaking for any relationship, and Sam was able to apply all her study, talent and willpower to them.

Take the current situation, for instance. Two people, thrown together by automotive coincidence, unable to comprehend their attraction, their adrenaline pumping due to recent caffeine and a brisk walk, find themselves alone together in an elevator with music playing that sounds suspiciously like a harmonica version of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. They're searching for an ostrich. Neither has mentioned that both are missing from work. In Reginald's case, there is currently a phone call to the branch manager asking if they should call detectives, or even 911. And Melinda's many business contacts are certain she has been crushed in a plane crash or, perhaps, by violent retribution. I'm sad to say that a few are expressing great glee in their own versions of what that retribution might look like, even though they've profited from Melinda's expertise many times. One idly jots down on a napkin, "Car compactor. Ants. Eight thousand candy canes."

If you were a relationship, how would you handle this case?

In fact, that would become a standard interview question once Sam reported back to her office (there's no office, really, but I'm trying to supply you, friend, with comfortable metaphors. It's the same thing as when space aliens all can speak English. Everyone understands the writers are just saving money and keeping the story going. Which is what I need to do.).

Some relationships would get them talking. Some might even get them ripping each others' clothes off. And still others would keep them quiet.

Sam decided to keep them guessing.

He introduced a buzzing fly into the elevator. The fly came close to embedding itself in Melinda's hair, then smacked itself against the lighted number 8 above the elevator doors as they were passing that floor. Finally, it swerved back toward Melinda whose hand careened outward and would have ended the fly's embarrassingly short life if Reginald hadn't stuck his hand out and caught the dark insect of fate like a third baseman catching a lazy line drive.

"Kill the damn thing, Boone, if you've got the guts."

"No."

"Coward!"

The elevator doors opened on floor 14. Boone stepped out, keeping the fly casually caged. He turned a classic baleful eye upon Melinda.

"We're going to need this," he said, and headed up the hall.

The next installment of Cromwell and Boone is about half finished. In the meantime, here's a short freewrite inspired by a comment I heard in a radio interview several months ago.

"We learned how not to be conned, where to find the best prices for bedsheets and computers and oregano." --talking about moving to Mumbai

In the Friendly Bazaar, Joseph leaned forward against his chair, tipping its hind legs into a precarious balance. If he applied his weight at the wrong vector, the chair would fly out from under him and he'd fall into the masses of people. This had happened once before, to laughter and delight, and he'd actually gained a few customers that day. But to repeat that would be an obvious gimmick.

The chair balance was more subtle. People would notice out of the corner of their eyes, and become uncomfortablely fascinated by the tension, the possibily of disaster. They'd look his way, and he'd smile and lean forward just a little more, then return, then do this again, charming them like a serpent. When a buyer came within a few feet, Joseph knew that making the sale was only a formality.

Today had been a good day. He might close a little bit early, so that he could stop at Madame Alaki's and feed the llamas. She'd give him a bar of Noticia Chocolate with Cardamom and Ginger. That evening, he'd produce the bar while the children were playing Circles and Thread, or Beehive Bonnets, or some other game. He'd move it from one hand to the other, sometimes gliding his fingernail against the wrapping, as if he were sending forth clouds of awaremess from some psychic pipe. First one, then another of his sons and daughters would hesitate in their game, would cock a head or sniff the air. Then, suddenly, all three would drop pins or globes or magic chalk and storm him in the most direct assault this area had seen in a century. But he'd hold the treasure high, laughing and taunting, until their pleading turned to begging and he'd have to remind them of their manners. Silence would follow, bright eyes and bare feet following him to the kitchen where Marta would clean a particular knife always used for this game.

First one child, then another, would cut a line in the bar, but not all the way through. Sometimes one area of the bar would be larger than the others, but most often they came out to equal divisions. Joseph then would step to the far end of the table, cry out "Catch the Salime!" and toss the bar up. When it hit the polished metal table's surface, the bar would crack into pieces, hopefully where the cuts had been made--but not always. Quick fingers stopped chocolate bits as they flew outward like dark, jagged water drops.

The largest piece was always walked gravely to Marta, who would take it, nibble a corner and pronounce it "the best she'd ever tasted." If this left the child without a piece, the others would break off parts of theirs and offer them. Then, the ritual complete, all would run to their favorite areas of the house and savor the confection.

Later, Joseph would tell Marta about his day, the angry owner who wanted to raise rents--but then, how many vendor's would leave? She, in turn, would tell him that while he was lazily making money, she was performing all the work that needed doing. He would offer to trade her for a week, and she would ask how he made any profit if he entered so easily into such bad bargains. Joseph would then relent (especially since he knew Marta had grown up selling Barabia Butter, notoriously difficult to get rid of before it went bad), take off her shoes and rub her feet with cinnamon-scented oil.

That night, they'd sleep with their fingers touching. The windows would be open, the aroma of the river's grass calming their dreams.

Use only ten words. How much can be conveyed? Can it be done using somewhat plain words? You squeeze my knee. My stomach floods. It's not fair.

We begin this part of our journey in space. One quality of space, we've been told, is that in it, no one can hear you scream. In a future episode, we'll see how false this is. For now, there is no one available to test that hypothosis, so I'll speak no more of it.

What is true is this: in space, everything that matters is either way bigger than you, or way smaller.

Major Paprovich knew this. It was undeniable, during a space walk. At this moment, he was confronted with both extremes. His oxygen was leaking. Atoms of life. Small. And he was drifting toward Earth. 12,756 kilometers in diameter. Big.

An atom has a diameter of approximately 1x10^-8 cm. Ten billion, set next to each other, would be about a meter long. How many atoms--Angstrom units--in diameter is the Earth? You do the math. Major Paprovich had done it, once, and his girl friend said that this piece of knowledge caused the twinkle in his eye that had attracted her to him in the first place. For his part, the Major was attracted to her lips.

It was a freak thing. Something, probably a meteoroid (which, by definition, can be as tiny as a speck of dust--small) had penetrated his suit and the resulting quick blast of air had pushed him away from the capsule. This wasn't supposed to happen, but in space no one can hear you complain about physics.

The next coincidence was that his tether broke. Again, this wasn't supposed to happen, even if he tugged on it hard. Still in space, no one heard Paprovich say various curse words. He also--and this tells you how strangely the brain works--recalled how he'd taken a pair of pliers when he was seven and pulled out his left lateral incisor. It was loose; it wasn't, however, loose enough. His mother rushed him to the hospital, and his father gave him a stern talking to, primarily letting his hand speak against the boy's bare butt.

Normally, the vacuum of space is good for one thing: it lets radio signals transmit without deflection, except by gravitational bodies. Remember that many things come in threes. Good things, occasionally, such as the three nights in Vegas that Paprovich and his girlfriend had enjoyed primarily in their hotel room. They had no interest in gambling, and quite an interest in room service. At the moment, though, the third thing wasn't so good, and this was the fact that the Major's helmet radio had failed.

A dozen engineers would later try to understand this string of accidents during the two and a half weeks prior to them being fired in an attempt to assure the public that the agency was doing everything it could to fix these problems. The fact that firing qualified engineers who were thoroughly knowledgeable about the equipment and were, thus, the best people to figure out what happened wasn't discussed in the press, except by a woman named Betty Humble--she defied her name--who let an NBC reporter know exactly what she thought of the agency, the public, the administration, the press, and, for that matter, the cameraman who had better keep that damn light out of her eyes.

If you're wondering which would kill Paprovich first, asphyxiation or friction, the answer was asphyxiation. He'd done the calculation in his head, and figured out his body would hit the atmosphere about fifteen minutes before he lost all his air. However romantic it might seem to Hollywood, becoming a human meteor would be awful, painful, and in no way dignified. Suffocation wouldn't be dignified, either, but he'd pretty much go to sleep. With good fortune, he'd dream of Vegas. So, Paprovich resolved to release most of his air if he wasn't somehow rescued.

If you're also wondering, at this point, why he didn't turn his body so that he could release the above-mentioned oxygen and steer himself back toward the capsule, you're forgetting one thing: people don't think clearly when they're going to die. They think about bloody teeth and naked thighs.

But, the Major wasn't doomed to either fate. His companions in the capsule weren't in the habit of sleeping at the wheel, so to speak. They got the craft in motion. They maneuvered between the astronaut and his home planet that, right now, seemed patiently malevolent, like a single ant that eats a rabbit caught and unconcious in a trap. The astonished Paprovich watched that white behemoth nose toward him and execute a brilliant, slow motion arabesque, tipping down (relatively speaking) and showing the opening airlock chamber, into which he entered. If you think this can only happen in a movie, you're wrong. But only because it worked this time.

Major Paprovich later told his girlfriend that he'd thought of her in those minutes, facing death. She didn't believe him, but it was such a sweet thing to say that she rewarded him with complex sex for the next week.

Things would have been fine for both of them if they hadn't met the nine fingered man who smoked a filterless thin cigar. It was this man, whom they only knew as Eduardo, who convinced them they could make lots of money doing a one-time favor. All they needed to do was help transport a bird during their next trip to America. Since they were visiting Cincinnati, Ohio soon, for baseball's traditional opening day, they agreed. The money would pay for lots of in-room breakfasts.

Why didn't they ask what kind of bird?

Eduardo chuckled as he saw the jet lift off. He knew how unhappy the couple were. He knew how much the flightless bird was worth. He knew this thing would work, and that no one would figure out his plan. In fact, Eduardo knew, intuitively, that in the spaces of his mind, no one could hear him scheme.

It starts its fall from two hundred feet. Possibly higher--I'm terrible with distances, even fictional ones. This might astonish you, but it's true. Authors don't always have control over their own work, any more than humans truly have control over their own minds. At the worst moment, we'll say inappropriate things. Approaching an intersection, our memory will kick in for just an instant--maybe influenced by the aroma of Sicilian peperoni pizza baking in the restaurant on the corner--and we'll become convinced the light is green when it's actually red, sail through and be spun three times by a garbage truck.

So, if you think I should know the exact distance it started falling from, you have another think coming.

"Abercrombie and Fitch," stated Reginald.

Melinda wanted to argue, wanted to deride, wanted dearly to retort. But . . . and this unnerved her . . . she could only breath shallowly three times, then say, "I agree."

Reginald had fished out change so that he could leave exactly a seventeen percent tip. This was his trademark. It wasn't the only eccentric thing about him, but it was the only one worth bringing up at parties or after closing when all the waiters and bussers were hammering beers and filling the sugar caddies. It was less flashy than the fellow who left his tips using two dollar bills. It was also more practical. You didn't want to spend one of those relatively rare Jeffersons. But you could scoop 3.78 into your purse and buy cat litter or a dumb toy for your four-year-old. Reginald's habit was so well known that, when he once left twenty-one percent, the server glowed for days and even called his mother in Anchorage to brag about it. On another occasion, he left nine percent. That server was suspended.

It has bounced off a tenth story window. A cleaning woman, inside, saw it, put down her rag and spray bottle, pulled out a small pad of paper, the kind that are seventy-nine cents and are spiral bound at the top--reporters pads, they're sometimes called--and a pen, and quickly wrote a haiku. She had three hundred of these pads, neatly labeled with the dates she started and finished writing in them. They would be found after she inexplicably moved to Hawaii to work as a hairdresser. Her apartment superintendent would be the one who opened the boxes, trying to figure out where she had gone, and lamenting that he'd lost a tenant who, while a little odd, paid rent on time. Even though he would give all her clothes away, and sell her furniture and stereo, he would keep the notepads, read them, and eventually show them to a university professor. You might think you're pretty safe in doing something like this, that such educators hold themselves to higher ethical standards. In reality, it's a crap shoot. Fortunately, this professor came up an eleven, compiled, edited and published the works in a series of fascinating articles called "Missing Inks". One day, the cleaning lady come coiffure-er was layering a client's gorgeous blonde hair, truly a river of fine gold that could hold any perm or style, when the client at the next table quoted one of the articles. Our multi-talented heroine of the moment got full details, called the professor, and was pleasantly (as you will be) surprised to learn that all money from the articles, except what covered expenses, was in a separate account in hopes the author would come forward. Today, the professor and the author share a house and travel on frequent book tours together.

Cromwell hated tipping, hated the whole concept. She hated commissions of any kind, including--perhaps especially--in sales. She believed it lead to a less-than-team spirit and, while she was not a team player herself, she recognized that other people needed that comfortable sense of togetherness to make them feel good about whoring themselves out to multi-billion dollar corporations that had no more concerns for their customers than a giraffe has for treetop leaves.

It turned out this was fairly forward-thinking on Melinda's part. During her lifetime (which, we shall eventually see, is unusually long) most businesses would stop paying commissions, and most restaurants would pay their servers a straight--and fair--salary. The equitable wage would come about because of a social movement whose real name was never remembered and so was generally called "be-nice-ism". Despite this idea being part of other philosophies and religions, it had never occured to anyone to let it stand on its own until a butcher from Long Island started saying "thank you" loudly and persistently to every person he met. You wouldn't think this would become an international sensation, but then who would have predicted pet rocks?

She left ten percent, on the theory that she had to wait in line and thus had, to a large degree, served herself.

The wind had picked it up for a moment, tossed it back up a few feet, but now it's falling again, twisting, a little like a delicate cyclone.

Boone asked, "Will you have dinner with me?" He asked it in the same way he would ask for the self-sticking paper strips that are used to wrap stacks of fifty dollar bills.

To say that Cromwell was speechless would be a complete lie. She told Boone what she thought of men like him, who obviously had so little intenstinal fortitude that they might as well get sucked up into a Boeing jet engine. She said many things that, in candor, I can't repeat. People stared. This was abnormal coffe shop verbosity.

When Melinda stopped, Boone waited an extra few seconds, just to be sure she was really finished, then asked politely. "Well, will you?"

You may not believe she said yes. I wouldn't, if I had heard about her behavior to this point. But the fact is, she did say yes, said it as if she were trying to talk around a hard pretzel that had become stuck in her throat. Everyone in the vicinity was surprised. (So was Reginald, but the reasons for that will have to wait for another time.)

The affirmation given, they paused. If I haven't mentioned they were sitting outside, I should do so now. It's important. If not for this fact, it wouldn't have been Cromwell and Boone who had the blue feather plop onto their table. It wouldn't have been Cromwell who said, "What the fuck?" And--critically--it wouldn't have been Boone who said, "Struthio camelus."

Cromwell asked the question that all of us are asking (all of us, that is, who don't know the answer). Boone picked up the feather and stared at it.

"Ostrich."

The adventure had begun.

Been sick for a while, robbed of my creative will. Here are some small bits of writing, just to keep the words active in my deleterious brain. (Not quite the right adjective.)

---------------

We missed the plane. Terribly. It had been our favorite craft, twin props, smelling of oil and candy bars, and painted banana yellow.

---------------

Night was coming quickly, and the cold with it. My foot had swelled from the sand and the spider bite. No blanket, no water, no shelter. I'd be lucky to make it through the night, but I'd also be damned if Jack Sanhorn would take my life along with everything else.

I stuffed a piece of scrub brush into my pants pocket. When I saw him, I was going to rub his face in it until he bled.

---------------

When Marjorie wore that white, sheer bedsheet with the eyes cut out, my belly would go numb. I loved our private Halloween.

---------------

"Never mind the cat," said Mallory. "What about the million dollars you promised me?"

Sunny tipped her hat a little back from her forehead and gazed at him as if he were an icicle that she was deciding whether to lick.

"Mallory, my man," she said, "the million was dependent on the feline, and the feline was dependent on you, and you are not, it seems, dependable. Didn't Jules make this clear to you? Did you even read the contract?"

Mallory leaned forward and smacked the desk. "Hell yes, I read it! And don't ever send that fat momma's boy here again to try and intimidate me. I got one question for you, lady. How was I supposed to rescue this alley cat when it was dead before you called me?"

"Tickle, tickle, good sir."

"What in Christ sake does that mean?"

"It means, you need to feel funny. I have a piece of equipment here, with twelve good reasons for you to become more light-hearted." She drew a flat automatic from her tailored jacket to emphasize her meaning.

Phil Mallory had dealt with people. Lots of people. He knew a bluff when he saw one.

He wasn't seeing one now.

-------------------

They held hands from eleven until midnight, walking toward the barn where he would spend the night. Behind them, the river lapped the shore like a thousand golden retrievers, while around their heads the gnats and fireflies competed for attention. Oklahoma, when it's warm and wet, proclaims its earthiness. Stepping outside, the atmosphere doesn't equivocate. "What's under your feet is what owns you," it says. "This life in open air and moonlight is an illusion that the land allows you. At a whim, you can be retrieved into the soil."

Lovers, friends, brutes and whores. They all breathe in life on those nights, and stare at the stars, and remember nightmares when they were seven, and cotton candy, and popping fireplaces with flues needing cleaning.

Our couple arrives at the barn. Her eyes are brown, the color of wet dust. She kisses him so he'll want more, then walks to her house. He sleeps in the straw, smells the odor of cows, counts the flapping of bats, and drifts into dreaming as the owls return with their breakfasts.

It should be granted that many things happen in life that we'll never know. That seems obvious. It is obvious. And yet, we shuffle through the laundromats of our destinies, glancing at the spinning clothes of other people's current lives, sometimes wondering where that shirt came from, but never considering how long that pair of pants will last given the huge hole in the butt.

Perhaps, though, like the centipede who was asked how he could coordinate all those legs, if we stopped to think of it we'd go mad.

At the nearby coffee mega-village, Melinda Cromwell ordered her coffee, "ordered" being the operative word.

"A breve caramel latte, half the usual caramel, extra milk, no whipped cream, nutmeg instead of cinnamon and I'm pretty sure if you don't get it right I'll purchase a graf zeppelin and crash it, burning, into your storefront on a lovely Sunday morning while little girls in their church dresses entertain thoughts of marriage as a chorus of angels sings above."

The young man at the counter clearly wanted to quit, this instant, and forget he ever heard the words "graf zeppelin". Instead, he asked "Um, Ashley, did you get that?"

"Yep. Caramel Flip Out, coming right up." Ashley was a pro, and still owned the church dress she wore at age twelve.

Reginald Boone stepped up. "A small cup of coffee, please. Do you have cream?"

Again, the young man contemplated working some place with fewer maniacs. Perhaps Congress, or Disneyland.

"Uh. Yes. Sir. Ten varieties of cream." Boone looked alarmed. The young man continued, hastily, "On that counter. The regular coffee's there, too. First one on the left." The man didn't feel up to explaining about the fifteen types