it was a silver dayone of those rare
days when silver supersedes gold it wafts its colouring goes between dull gunmetal grey to the vibrance of a grandmothers patient and painstakingly
polished silver
beside him ran a runlet of
rainwater
it hurried between an eroded
edge of a tarmacked road and its earthen shoulder
submerged in it were sensual banks of sand and silt
and mixed-in organic matter
lengths of it were clogged
by stones tumbled and stolen by the downpour
the rainwater ran in a trough of
its own creationa trough that wiggled its way like a drunken man head pitched forward
who suffered the inertia of the descending hill and who only braked when he
stumbled falling onto his hands and knees catching himself saving himself from smashing his face the clear water snatched bits of
the tippling sunlight strongarmed and wrestled them to form bullion bars and brightcoins weave delicate splits and bang-out careless shards
the runoff reminded him
it reminded him of when he was a boy in the city walking along curbs above their rushing street gutters he would drop a twig or curled leaf into the rainwater and imagine they were an Indian birchbark canoe and he inside he paddled them across fat pools the while anxious to avoid their suddenappearing slurping vortexes then he stroked and steered his way among the shallows over their rolling swells and fast whitewater and just before the canoe tipped up on its nose and was gobbled by iron storm-grates he saw himself leap awkwardly to safety and clutch and swing dangerously from overhanging tree limbs or sturdy brush then pantinghis eyes bright and full of nonsense hed run back up the street to find another vessel and begin anew another mad river adventure
it reminded him of when he was a boy in the city walking along curbs above their rushing street gutters he would drop a twig or curled leaf into the rainwater and imagine they were an Indian birchbark canoe and he inside he paddled them across fat pools the while anxious to avoid their suddenappearing slurping vortexes then he stroked and steered his way among the shallows over their rolling swells and fast whitewater and just before the canoe tipped up on its nose and was gobbled by iron storm-grates he saw himself leap awkwardly to safety and clutch and swing dangerously from overhanging tree limbs or sturdy brush then pantinghis eyes bright and full of nonsense hed run back up the street to find another vessel and begin anew another mad river adventure
now he could fathom no reason why
he shouldnt play againbeing older or a man was no
difference to the boy he carried inside him
so he found a twig
he walked back up the street a street halfway
across the continent from where he grew up
and into the fast water he dropped it and began a new – old imagining
he played better than a halfhour
and because this street hadnt curbs or storm drains his raucous journeys ended when the river emptied into a side street and the water spread out and up and down and flat and calm he tipped out of the canoe into the simmering and swam easily to shore to begin again
as
he did as a boy in the last century
the manchild and the boy are separated only by a thin gulf of Time rescued again and again and again by the happy happy
self-absorption of Memory
Memory that can leap that can fly that can impossibly hover in the sky like the comic book Superman his parents took
from him and thought they destroyed
after 1300, Monday,
9 1. 17
1550, Twosday,
10 1. 17
Look! Up in the sky . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l4bz1FT8U or The Cramps Garbage Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLpaiH2hbQ
