Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The Principle of Moments

She is small, ephemeral as dry bedsheets stirring in a south wind, and gravity has never hung heavy upon her. She dips on her feet, bending at the knee to peer at the sun’s reflection on the surface of the water, and it seems that she could take flight and leave the restraint of the ground, and I say nothing, heavy limbed, half-sleeping, moving into the tedium of midmorning. I move forward one place in the line for coffee, or a glass of milk, or that chocolate mousse cake I always consider getting, but am never willing to pay the price of a fast food lunch to get, and also wonder if it wouldn’t make me sick to my stomach, and on the way back, with my customary drink that I buy because I don’t need exact change to purchase it, I see a woman in a leather jacket, kneeling on the carpet to peer into an oddly placed computer screen, and I consider the implications of kneeling, and the hidden, darker remembrances of another year, now hardly seeming as if those events ever happened to me. And then I am gone, and the morning is gone, and the beverage cup sits at the bottom of the garbage can, and the annoying song they use for commercials plays on the radio again, complete with all the insipid lyrics they cut out for that purpose, and all the people who hear it are tethered to the earth, and their desks, and their computer terminals, and a man with sandals walks an old Labrador retriever by the window, and they each are filled with a terrible pang of envy.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A trinity of somewhat dark contemplations. You had quite a productive afternoon Firehawk.

This first one reminds me of some of your "early" work - back when you first started this blog. A closely observed interval in a daily routine. I like the way it floats between day dream and cool observation. But can't understand why the man and Labrador would feel envious of us desk jockies. Guess I'm just simple.

Bill said...

A busy day indeed! I too liked the way this floated between the dream and reality... while the dreaming took the form of those in the reality that bordered the dream.

Patrick M. Tracy said...

Swiftboat,

I got up and walked around for a few minutes today, and the poems pretty much just leapt into me, like raw current running up the fork you use to fish into the toaster. For me, it was just a matter of trying to hang onto the kernel of them long enough get back to a computer.

With respect to the envy part, I meant to indicate that those inside the office felt the envy for the guy walking his dog in the sun, though I can see how the run-on, convoluted sentence didn't really convey that.

Bill,

The sun sometimes shines on us, right? This one actually took the form of two poems kind of intertwining in my head. That's why I didn't even bother with the line breaks. Easier to just leave it in prose form and let the reader time it out as he wishes, I think.

Thanks for coming over, both of you.

Mushster said...

Hi Firehawk, I have a lot to catch up on don't I? You've been very industrious :)

MB said...

Firehawk, I haven't even gotten to the others yet, but I love this. It is dry, ephemeral, itself. As if there is a wisp of something to be grasped quickly for a moment before it's lost again. I like the prose form very much because it adds to the feeling of a wash of sequential moments. (I did stumble a moment over the referents in the last phrase.)

Patrick M. Tracy said...

Mush,

Hi, glad to see you around. Hope you're well.

MB,

Thanks for coming over, and glad you liked the piece. Some people had no problem with the last part, others got lost. For the moment, I'm going to leave it as is...

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