My body, over there, splayed on the
driveway.
I, in this
director’s chair, hunker, slurping the dredges
of the morning coffee, now hours and
hours aged,
memo-ing the awkward and
painful-looking angle
of my right leg, joint jagged at the
new bend
in shin, hip flexible like never since
I was four,
five maybe. My left hand appears to be reaching,
trying to grasp the edge of the lawn –
that, or
it has been smashed by a sledge
hammer,
is now busy mimicking a slovenly water-walker,
undecided between hornwort and
duckweed.
My left shoe is not tied. Funny what you notice.
I distinctly
remember tying the laces, the bend
to reach the shoe over and around the
knee
but now - even as I say I distinctly remember -
what I mean is I almost always did tie
the laces,
bending to reach the shoe over and
around the knee,
so because I am sure that nothing has
disturbed
my body since the leap which did fall
me
(I will not have not left my side in
the meantime)
I can begin to make
the assumption that today
is the day I did not bend to tie the
laces of at least
the left shoe as the right shoe, from
where I lurk,
is obscured by the scalene triangle my
leg
is trying to form. Why my body is now attempting
polygons is beyond me, the word obtuse most
likely right around the corner of this
sentence in search
of logic where rhetoric fails. I need a sandwich, a dab
of meaning and something more than a hypotenuse
imitating the lyrical tragic muse over
on the green swing.
Just yesterday I
contemplated a fourth place finish
in a five man race, no women allowed,
no need to be correct
and say five person race which would be still not correct
as person implies human and we were
not, all of us.
The first loser in the race rejoiced
at not being the second
place loser who was equally happy at
the equidistance he
had managed to put between himself and
the third place
loser, in this contemplation myself,
who had stopped to catch
a whiff of daffodil coming down the
hill before the final turn
which turned out to be fortunate as
the fourth place loser
passed me, laughing a bit right before
he was flattened:
cliff, falling boulder, splat. I came in fourth place by default
because I did not die during the race
but I never finished
either, forgetting exactly where the
course ran and why
I was running or how large was the
prize for the winner.
There was no prize for the by the way
winner because we
do not prize success over metals which
did not keep
the second and third-place losers from
leaping with a sort
of joy, which did not keep me from
climbing to the top of the green
backyard swing, to watch the next leg
of the race go swiftly
by the yard, no hurdles to overcome no
boulders to hopefully
fall, which no arrhythmia could have
foreseen, which no hopping
could have prevented, which no l
ace-entangled fall would have broken.
I like mine cold, with extra mustard,
enough to run
the entire race, all the way from the
mouth to the chin.
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