A raggle-taggle crowd, so many of you, tall and short, the skinny and the fat, those who understood most everything and those in the dark about almost everything, the slow and the fast, grandmothers and grandchild and all between, standing in semicircle listening to stories told, looking for shade, sitting waiting for latecomers, watching shiny-faced female exercise dancers strutting and lifting their arms in the full blaze of the sun, in a long strung-out line from one remark-point to the next, yet patient, attentive, fatigued but not furious: you'd been asking for the tour all week and you drank it in what I gave you. Then to the brewhouse for other draughts.
Last weekend, they pointed up over the lake at a bald eagle winging by. There was the white head and neck, the powerful wings. Where were the arrows in your claws, the banners wreathed around the neck, the red and white along with the blue against which it flew on your own business.
As the feared disaster failed to show, your face, relaxed, began to form itself into muggings almost pantomime in their exaggeration, and your tongue, long, red and muscular, made its appearance, stretching, turning. Once, then again, for only a moment each time. So how do I explain the images flash-burned on my brain, or my lust to know that normally discrete organ better.
You made my furious, you my reserved partners, you, our scattered leader, you my balky feet so slow to learn left or right, up or down, forward or back, you the interleaved dark and light patterned night in the city square, you the Balkan songs too long and yet too short, you my absent friend, the relief of my solitude, but not you, gentle sinuous breeze that wrapped me as a playmate would waft and twine a silk shawl around one to make him lover.
I expected to be bored, but your program revision presentation was well-organized and well-run. Your usual banalities were perfect for the presentation. You, my long-winded colleagues, asked the cogent questions, and you, presenter, passed them on to the knowledgeable on your team, or promised to resolve the matter in the committee you credited so often. I left knowing what I had to do, and how, but not dictated to. When I talk to you privately I can hardly break through your stream of awkward cliches, and yet this new direction is clear and thought-through, and under your direction. What do I not know about you?
Last weekend, they pointed up over the lake at a bald eagle winging by. There was the white head and neck, the powerful wings. Where were the arrows in your claws, the banners wreathed around the neck, the red and white along with the blue against which it flew on your own business.
As the feared disaster failed to show, your face, relaxed, began to form itself into muggings almost pantomime in their exaggeration, and your tongue, long, red and muscular, made its appearance, stretching, turning. Once, then again, for only a moment each time. So how do I explain the images flash-burned on my brain, or my lust to know that normally discrete organ better.
You made my furious, you my reserved partners, you, our scattered leader, you my balky feet so slow to learn left or right, up or down, forward or back, you the interleaved dark and light patterned night in the city square, you the Balkan songs too long and yet too short, you my absent friend, the relief of my solitude, but not you, gentle sinuous breeze that wrapped me as a playmate would waft and twine a silk shawl around one to make him lover.
I expected to be bored, but your program revision presentation was well-organized and well-run. Your usual banalities were perfect for the presentation. You, my long-winded colleagues, asked the cogent questions, and you, presenter, passed them on to the knowledgeable on your team, or promised to resolve the matter in the committee you credited so often. I left knowing what I had to do, and how, but not dictated to. When I talk to you privately I can hardly break through your stream of awkward cliches, and yet this new direction is clear and thought-through, and under your direction. What do I not know about you?
No comments:
Post a Comment