"...like sleaves of grease..."

He could be thought an ugly man. The right reach of his face between nostril and lip pull up in a jeer so constant that even his smiles take on the look of tongued battle between molar and seed. On this side, too, a bag of skin hangs below his eye, bloated with the insults and complaints his lips have held back for so much lost time.

He is a sailor who never learned that saying our goodbyes we are also always declaring certain hellos. He is a sailor who forgets just how much he remains with those he continually leaves behind. He is a sailor with back turned to the wonders of the open.

But one would be wrong to see this alone. For, despite his well-plaited and rough-burnished husk, his flesh remains as soft and unprotected as some sun-warmed peach. His hands are firm in purpose, securing the lines of cared-for lives without question, without invoice. His chin sometimes laughs with warm bellows that send children deeper into their frolicsome play. And, more than most, his saddened eyes open, like some unsought miracle, unto the tears of things.

He could be seen as an ugly man, but he is not. Like so many, he's simply a sail or two or three or ten away from learning how to sail home. And, when he does, he will at great long last greet those who remain with the living goodbye that is caught beneath his longing, still supple skin.

We, sailors of this earth...

I push my finger down here, gran-dada. My four fingers push down too, dada. Shoulder, chest, neck of the strongest tree. Hold me up, hold me tight. You are my gran-dada.

N’er will I let you go, my wee head of yarn. Your eyes are my eyes. We look across the sea like sailors of an ancient watch…quiet-like…while others chatter on. Little pluck of my heart, where do you find this reverence? Of all that is full force, unknown, and deserving of thanksgiving…

Gran-dada, carry me across the grass and set me within the waves. Hold tight to my coat tail.  Gran, gran, the breath of the wave pushes against me. My eyes squinch like yours. Where does the sea go when it swallows, dada? Where does it sleep? Can it feel my fingers touch it, splat, splat, splat? Da da, da da, stallion manes and crashing hooves chase me down the sand! Nothing can catch me except you, dada.  

Little fingers, will you become these worn, storied hands of mine? Will yours continue to touch the world like they do now? Is it merely a matter now of your being so close to its ground? Will they grow up and away, tracing the world in polished, kept and tidy ways? Do I yearn always to go to sea so that once again that which holds me up is a hand’s reach away? Wee head, come to me so that I may have something to hold against my hands again, to feel that some portion of the earth meets the resistance of my hands…hands sloughing off their callouses, losing their partnership with rope and wood and tar…now that I’m returned to land. 

Spin, spin, spin me, gran-dada, the silly gull screeching such and so above.  Taller…that I can see across the ocean’s edge. Where? How? Why does she breathe so loudly? What does she say? My finger pushes down on your shoulder here.  My four fingers over here. My head and your head, hard and warm and curly together. Salted breaths, we squint with sea eyes. We see the sea, don’t we, dada?

Yes, my yarn, we see the sea.   

To pause and look around...

Love looks here.

From deep within the kitchen, grandmother steps away from the hearthfire and looks out...at daughter-mother, at grandson-son, at doggie-friend, and son-husband-father.  Love tumbles along these connect-the-dot heart paths.  For the moment, the love is smooth and soft, bathed in summer sun, warming the floorboards that squeak with comforting familiarity.  The pie is baking, the meringue just catching its toasted caramel color.  Lilacs tumble in the breeze and diffuse the memories of childhoods 1, 30, and 50 years old, but no one notices that...except to find their smiles feeling just a bit deeper than they were a moment before.  

Doggie-friend barks once, head and eyes tilting back for a moment’s confirmation, then barks two more times quickly in succession.  Can we play now?  Stick, grass, around the maple one and a half times.  The field.  Yes.  We run like the wind, because storybooks and poems are very often true.  

Mother-daughter opens the screen door, and inhales.  She smiles at her mother’s back, arms moving forwards and returning, forwards and returning, as she kneads the white bread of her every day.  Eyes fill with tears, because these things are so often overlooked in favor of the loan, the sore hip, the clothes to be mended, the husband distant in some concern.  The tears bring rains of joy as she reaches her towel-draped hands into the oven to take out their most favored ritual of communion.

Come together.  “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.”  For within that place, even the greatest trials can be held and cared for, even the greatest pains can be softened and heard.  Love lets grow here.

Sweet steam from the pie trails about in the kitchen and weaves its way through warp and woof of its screens.  Porch reveling in the flowers of all its perfumes.  A momentary silence for us to pause and look around.

Doggie-friend bounds back upon the porch, little two feet follow, father smiles and opens the door, letting in these boundless-for-now energies, flowered memories, and the wafts of warmed lemon that had drifted outward, but decided they’d like to rejoin the family inside.  

Around the hearthfire.

Lovingkindness.

May it also be with you.

Clear the heavens and give our eyes again to see...

I purposefully deny the more likely explanation.  Imagining instead that these animals have come to town with a traveling road show, temporarily housed in a most practical setting--the centrally located, always meant to be used, municipal tennis courts. 

Surely, whether a permanent home or a night's stay, this is not friendly to giraffes, and I don't pretend otherwise.  For whimsy's sake, however, let's overlook this feature of the story...or, even worse, take advantage of the bewitching juxtaposition made possible by this form of containment.

Forget the context, and bend in closer.

The photograph is taken through two sets of chain link fencing; crucial parts of the animals are hidden by the wire's crossbars.  One can see a crowd of onlookers across the court, faces framed by layers of countless patchwork boxes.  Faces looking.  Faces looking at giraffes, faces looking at children, faces looking somewhat dull.  Then, there's the picture taker, all alone on this side of a fence reaching even above the very tippy-top of the camera's view, looking intently upward at those giraffes. 

And, they look beautiful.  Seemingly made more elegant by the reaching metal structures hemming them in on every side and doing so in the dullest of angular ways.

The giraffes' necks parade upward; the swell of their posture can convincingly be described as proud.  Their patterned skin and directed ears look tight with the spring of internal life force.  I can almost see and hear the giraffes’ feet making strange clicking noises on the crusty court surface as they shift aimlessly in place.  I picture them moving across the court slowly, undulating about the boxed space as if nearly imperceptible tides had been left behind by the volley of balls from the morning’s match and could be transmitted through the giraffes' endlessly long legs--legs like antennae (or landslides) vulnerable to any terrestrial disturbance.  Why else would they move in this barren landscape?  Why else?

The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon...

This is a story of nothing nice. A story of human racing. 

The story,
Of the human,
Race.

(A to the the, to the unh, unh, unh.)

It’s a story of take you below.  Put you below.  Leave you below.

(Darling, speak low.)

Of ears that never stop ringing.

Of things you shouldn’t forget, but inevitably do.

(Of do diddie do dah, dang diddie doh.

Oh,

oh,

a 1, 2, 3, ohhhh…)

               (…sweet chariot. Bother me to carry me home.)

But this is someone else’s story, so you needn’t listen to it.

I’ll play the next song loud enough,
And, we'll swing, swing, swing it away.

Again, Sam.

Again!

"The city dweller rushes, the farmer moves steadily, the monk is solemn in the way he moves. Their objects are different." --J.H. van den Berg

There is a return that cannot seem to rest.   

Push, push on.   

Feet and hands treading, body surging, and the water moves with us.  Closing my eyes to each particular, smelling to find my way around.  Return now, my familiar unfamiliar.  It is new, and yet what I meant to say to you that night was: “This is what home feels like.”  The provisions are stored, and the screen door lets in enough wind, enough light, enough life.  You might have agreed with that.

Can we stop talking about this now?  

Perhaps.  

          But. 

   Then.  

Can you count the ways things are said aloud?  It's all in the listening.

And, breathing takes the form of in and out, 

a return that cannot rest.  

And we'll all fall down...

                                                Rickity splicket splat,

                              The moon spit out a bat.

                              Over the hill,

                              Under the mill,

                              Rickity splicket splat.

                                          

                                          Betimes we may,

                                          Betimes we might, 

                                          The bottle’s bold,

                                          And the nursemaid’s right.

                                              

                                                Fetter you once,

                                                Fetter you twice,

                                                Never let go,

                                                Or the boxbender’s price.

             Me daddy dug a three foot pit,

             Put in a spade and took out a fit.

             Round in the morn,

             Down in the horn,

             Me daddy dang a skim skam skit.