he had unexplained reasons why he
wouldnt have noticed
his nose was buried in Who Fears
Death reading of a child of rape an ewu reading of her Eleventh Year Rite which
was unlike anything he could imagine
female circumcision
yet walking up on it he reared to
a stop up on his toes because it spanned the width of the sidewalk(hed have to
look to pick his footsteps) he heeled as if he were walking dead-on into a
street sign whose weeping-rust metal pipe stained the concrete its eyelevel
sign to slap and drop him if he didnt duck sidestep it or stop
years of walking and reading
honed whatever that sense was just as it
had honed the senses of stepping into the empty air above a high curb or onto cracked
and heaved concrete slabs or of people either oncoming or coming up from behind
him that were somehow irritated by him sometimes belligerent
he simply knew obstacles were
there and moved around them as a blind man might without a cane
apparently overnight an overflow an
overwatering on the Fine Arts school property washed earth out from under the
Creeping Cotoneaster shrubs their berries gleamed bright red as if the water wasted
spilt across the walk and over curb into the storm sewer incensed them they glared
he felt suddenly apologetic towards
their myriad accusations
but his sharper reason elbowed
him in the ribs and unbridled his tingling consciousness letting him sluff it
he could feel strongly for Nature
something he rarely felt for his own
two-legged kind
hed felt that way since he was a
boy
unexplained reasons why
beyond the tailings of earth
there were pale grit fingerlings that looked like long shadows if the earth
could gather and stand on itself to cast them
its earthbits were rolled and
worn smooth like bbs and smaller
they were scattered and dry on
the aged-gray concrete
of them he noticed they seemed to make up lines broken lines
and when he walked out onto the
street and stood oblique to them they seemed to fashion an obscure text
perhaps braille
perhaps braille
where was a blind person when you
needed one
ants moved among its spoil
they were small red ants and
black ants a tad bit larger than the reds
they wheeled and spun they turned
threw themselves into reverse like epileptics in go-carts and all he could
imagine was that there must be microscopic organic matter freed in the turned earth
impossibly small grain that could be mined from the broken and cracked orbed husks
grain that held nothing for
two-legged apes like he
he stepped forward towards the
curb to let a car pass behind him
he didnt bother to turn and meet
the drivers glare or those if there were others inside sneering wondering why he
stood in the middle of a street as if it wasnt a street
once it passed he stepped back
again and tried to decipher what was strewn on the sidewalk before him
he laughed frankly
saying to himself Decipher
he
only knew English
if some thing
was trying to impart something to someone who happened along who was curious
enough to entertain its possibility that
it could be a message in America he
wouldnt think theyd write it in another language in Greek Etruscan Latin Hebrew
or Arabic script
he wouldnt think so
then he tried to picture it was a
larger script and let his eyes unfocus relax
simply look
No
he didnt see anything that way either
the ants milled madly as if his
presence exacerbated or piqued their tempers fiddled with their constitutions
finally he conceded it was
probably just an interesting concept that occurred to him
there was a good chance in the immediate
area that he might be the only person who thought it was worth the while to
stop and consider
someone else might likely believe
he was being foolish wasting his time
Are
you a fou he whispered to himself under
his breath
he
laughed
French
but the scribblescrabble the earthly
babble wasnt French either
Im sorry he said aloud
he addressed the Universe
Its beyond me My apologeez
he turned and walked away
but as he did he looked several times over his shoulder before utterly surrendering
he went back to reading Who Fears
Death
the ants sighed silently
they were relieved the thing was
gone
they busied themselves between
the letters
they pushed and tumbled the bits around
until they reconfigured them
when they finished they stopped
their busyness wasnt wasted on
the Cotoneasters who mesmerised watched their structured deliberation their mad
trampling at an end when the thing left
and when the ants quieted the
Cotoneasters leaned forward and read what they wrote with the ur-memory
in their roots their origin in the Palaearctic temperate regions of Asia Europe
and north Africa(Who Fears Death dramatis was within its realm)
they responded to the messages by
vigorous shaking or waving their stalks often dislodging berries in fits of
laughter
and less often tenuously clasping
them together as if in prayer solemnly regarding their pithy acquittals
people who passed in
cars
if they thought to look outside them
might have been confounded by what
they understood was a still or mild day
they convince themselves that the
plants(they didnt know what they were or what they were called it wasnt important)
danced on an odd draft or an intemperate breeze or wind
1030, Saturday,
3 9. 16
