ONE

WAY

taunted by a traffic sign 


black letters and arrow on a reflective white field

a half-inch border cut a half-inch inside the signs edges

removed by someone from its station

laying flipped upside-down on the side of the road that wasnt one way

he carried it home tucked in his armpit and leaned it against the trunk of a failing black walnut in his yard

two years ago

he turned it on its side so its arrow pointed to Hell

nobody liked his joke

they were put off

imagine that

didnt like tempting fate he supposed 

but then maybe they were preoccupied with Hell

they encouraged him to flip its sides so the arrow pointed to Heaven

he didnt like that joke

this morning having coffee on the porch he stood looking into the backyard

he enjoyed the harping jays darting hummingbirds and terminally-wistful wrens their hopping through narrow branches thickets clinging to the grey weathered and tarred telephone pole electric pole and dancing on top of  planked fences pirouetting on picket slats  

their busyness and complete oblivion of the sign at the foot of the walnut

the sign now upright on its end

taunting him

ONE

WAY

the birds were one way

he liked the one way they were

atheists  unbelievers like him

unworried  jabbering  steady  assured  

while the branches they clutched with their feet bobbed and moved on the breeze erratically

no rhyme  rhythm   dissonant

be-as-it-will

he looked again at its accusation

ONE

WAY

the sign had nothing to say regarding traffic

1212,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  17  8. 16

Nabakov  Laughter in the Dark:  Death is often the point of life’s joke

2 ginger (of 2)

*    *    *

the ginger wouldnt hang in suspension
                                      it was unlike the suspense that still piqued him
the two women he came upon in the woods in Luxembourg Ardennes near Lac de la Haute-Sure

they endured to this day  he was mesmerised  he watched them turn lazily in the slowing vortex of his stirred tea

perhaps his compass was skittish Truth North tired of his begging tired of him sticking It with its magnetic point



the very thorough innkeeper noting the puny rucksack slung over his shoulder eyeing the late morning hour on the elaborate carved longcase clock encouraged him
Nach Westen nach Westen (West) Sechsundzwanzig (26) der kilometers Sechzehn meilen (16 miles)

a kind accidental tourist standing in the broad rustic foyer near him translated
his German wasnt good 

he thanked them for their kindness and turning to the innkeeper he said Vielen Dank mein Herr

the innkeeper nodded and restlessly repeated Nach Westen Sechsundzwazig der kilometers Nach Westen

the tourist said Ardennes is an Old World forest  It is filled with Old World things

What do you mean

I mean he means you ought to be going so youre not caught in the forest in the night

A bit ominous dont you think

I shouldnt want to be lost in the woods at night



and it was with those appeals their swath blush those broad strokes that he departed and entered Ardennes

the warm sun gave him a departing kiss on his back which cooled and briefly shivered his spine

in deepening shadows the air temperature fell


the trail he followed was slender and as it hadnt rained the earth was worked to a talcum 

running off its sides were thin spidertrails made by wildlife

he was arduously tempted to see what the wild things saw 

perhaps  if he had thought things through better and left earlier  perhaps  but his fascinating burden as he walked was the utterness of the wild forest
its vivifying absence of humankind

it was easy to imagine despite knowing otherwise that where he stepped he was the first man ever to have stepped there

a primalness invaded him   and upset him

he didnt dare stop walking moving 

he felt if he did hed take root

not that he would mind




his pace was unhurried

he figured walking as he was hed be shy of four miles in an hour  against the sixteen miles he was advised of if he didnt misstep need to backtrack hed arrive in the next hamlet late afternoon with sun easily remaining 

that he was accompanied only by the hush and creak of ancient limbs moving overhead he was mesmerised as he walked

he guessed he was in two hours

he came to a dusky shaded bend in the path which curved to his left

his head was down albeit briefly

he saw he was at the beginning an incline

raising his head at its crest he saw two women standing on the path facing each other

over the ones shoulder whose back was to him the second woman slightly higher on the path seemed dressed in exactly the same garb as the first woman who he could easily made out

she who faced him stopped talking

the woman whose back was to him shifted slightly as if alerted by his approach either by the second woman words and her quit

the second woman cautiously backed away  and as she stepped he lost her behind the first womans figure

he never saw her again caught up with her on the path or saw any evidence of her walking ahead of him

he looked hard at the path for any telltale footprints leather soles for any kind of disturbance                     

it was if no one walked ahead of him  not recently


as he continued approaching the first woman held her back to him

he was flummoxed that she hadnt turned to acknowledge him since she was keenly aware of his presence  small starts like a birds in her shoulders arms  though not fearful  

her clothing was handstitched made of rude cloth  a hooded cloak to her knees  it gathered at her throat and flowed down unformed  her gown beneath it was black and heavy and unadorned

she seemed otherworldly  possessing an ease a naturalness a confounding fearlessness which given their place deep in the forest provoked his own attentiveness he found odd 

where she stood seemed oddly warpedno  oddly repeating  as if reflected in a mirror  

her double somehow having be able to move off  untethered  while all else seemed held or captured   the trees  the small plants and shrubs crowding the hem of her garb like anxious children  their fingers imploring her pulling at her clothing  the talcum of the path itself stirred near beside her and also up the path across from it   reflecting

approaching within a rod of her his footsteps fell mute  the path sighed  she turned about over her left and passing him scarcely nodded 

he never saw her face 

it was buried in a black scarf that crossed the bridge of her nose

he saw only her eyes as she laid hers briefly on his

passing shoulder to shoulder she was then suddenly at his back walking noiselessly from whence he came

and the dank cloistered atmosphere he entered wavered and trembled like radiation

the trees and plants retracted and from somewhere  or nowhere  there seemed almost an audible breathing a hiss receding to echo  of someone hiding

or the forest itself                               

to his left there was a shimmer from a dark hole in the crown of a tree  a pale limegreen lighter than the surrounding leaves 

the trees crown was broken by smaller tree felled by storm and laid propped-up suspended  a rotting crumble like a hapless drunk collapsed in a railway car too crowded for anyone to push them off

where it slashed the canopy it pointed at the flickering limegreenness 

he stopped to look  and watched  and wondered if it was natural or unnatural 

there was a tension between it and he  an anxiousness in his neck and shoulders  a footplay as if legs without direction would flee

and watching and watching the forests fell more silent in suspense
                                                    suddenly it shot from the darkened gap like a bolt of atoms and slinged past his face to and pulled up before a flowered branch he did not see  its petals rubyred  petite 

a hummingbird  it fed  it didnt query him of its shoulder  it ignored him and quaffed and in and out and quaffed and in and around to another and another an another

and in the same kind of hurtle it reared then flung itself back to its perch in the rented tree

pale  flickering  limegreenness

unnatural

it ran at him he decided to defend its foodstuff

and standing now his feet shifted undirected pointing back up the path insisting  urging before him there was a groan  a relieved branch  a fixed-shadow hurtling at his head

he dropped as he dropped in the war at any provocation  some slapstick   some murderous
and stone-dropped an owls breast suspended between a sixfoot wingspan creased the silver air above his face against the crossed-branch and thatched ceiling and tickled humoured leaves

it happened and didnt and the owl didnt wheel and kept on
              
its mistake between it and he
a ridiculous attack

unapologetic



ridiculous




                      
             as the adamant rheumatologist


he stirred his tea

the spoon softly grazing and clattering at the sides of his cup  distracting him  like the sound of dry blown leaves brittle pine needles or clods of soft earth dislodged and falling from the hooves or paws of woodland creatures stealing afoot without the surreal luxury of two-footed beasts stomping and unafraid of becoming part of the foodchain   the unestimatable entitlement rarely usurped by hungry predators who likely recognise their awful scent but figure   Ohwhaddahell
                                                     frail hands    butched teeth
no match for honed claws fangs no conscience and their utilities perfected over the Ages




the ginger didnt hang in suspension

1234,  Friday,  5  8. 16

1018,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  17  8. 16