Northern Ballad

On a white and blistered evening,
she set out for morning,
long fed from the fat of my skin.
Our sex had got boring

and she hated my growing thin.
I wrote down a letter
with the blood of a broken stem,
to warn that the weather

approached like a horde of men—
who, when seeing the fawn,
wet their lips and whipped around,
and forced her towards the dawn.

When morning fell, I held the sound
of her wild, glass-like "no".
The wounds of the sky were salted
with the snows of her sorrow.

meditation wash

In the hot, downward pour
of my private shower,
I reaquaint myself
with the notion of warmth.
I run my fingers through
the mop of my head
and peel away the balled
knots, which hang from
my skull like bats
in front of a hot moon.
That shower-head moon
casting shadow after shadow
until one colossal shadow
like a winter afternoon
falls like an amorous net,
catching my eyes and softly
closing them up, so that
I hear nothing but water
making rivers around my lips,
and deltas leading down my thighs,
and muddy basins between my toes.
I feel heavy like a dream
being lifted out of sleep, other-
wordly, alien to the shower
curtain sticking to my shoulder.
I feel the water passing, passing
over. It smells like sewage but
I hold my tongue. The shower
holds the rest of me in its
thousands of jetted arms.

one man's two person three page story

The first book written had no introduction. It had no climax, no ending or action, none rising or fallen. There were only two characters who lived their lives out on the page patiently. On the first page, they were wiping their cuts from another one of their fights. There was not nearly enough food. On page two, the sun comes up. This was an exciting event, and is usually seen as the greatest triumph of the book. On the third page everyone is dead, including our two characters. Critics have supposed it is a skilled, softly-veiled allegory of when the dinosaurs perished. Others impose that knowledge, being a seed you should never swallow, is what killed our two characters. They had no names for their bodies. Their faces were old-fashioned, stern and dry. When they held hands, the sky threw rocks down at them. This was not in the story. It is implied.

I think I wrote this book. Or, at least, I think I know it well enough that I am capable. If I had been born at the right time. I could have made the three page finger painting that sets in motion the whole wheel of literature. Sure, I know the characters well enough. They practically invent themselves. But the whole idea of it tastes like milk: familiar, but not my own. Indulgent. I wonder about the absent introduction. Could their have been an inkling, a stinging temptation to sculpt the scene, to triangulate the moment? And why begin a book in the dark?

Of course the dark sparks everything. Let there be light, an obvious man said. Then he filled up three pages and left out the beginning and the end. I have seen the pages smiling in the dust. Sometimes in my dreams, I meet the original architect, the first messy child, who combed the sky into chaos, the indulgent master, the one who said let there be light. We've discussed the book at long length, and our conversation is usually the same. You didn't do a thing, I find myself saying. The light lets in itself. 

grassbones

Green's mean, baby.
It's creeping at your door,
loud and celebrating.
It grabs your foot
when you get the mail.
Green is the battery
of overgrowth.
Snakes in mingling
look like arteries,
crossed at the neck
and pinched like a hose.
Green's dead, baby,
the color of moisture
and decomposing
architecture.
That swamp punk
Kermit knew
how to die, spring
back, make a few
million dollars.
He catches envy
the same way he
catches flies: with
the two green arms
of his forked
tongue.

Spectre

When I first entered 45 Spring Drive, I had no indication of how long I would be staying. Only the vague sense that this house had been important, once, if not to me, then to a family-- how big, I couldn't begin to guess. But it was a decently sized house, in a cul-de-sac tucked just a couple blocks away from a park and a pond. In one of the driveways, nine cars somehow fit bumper-to-bumper like a gift shop toy. I never saw a single neighbor get in one of those cars.I figured I somehow misanticipated their timing windows. My driveway, however, was always empty. I came to Spring Drive by the strength of my legs and my feet. The same legs and feet that, once they had arrived, seemed stubbornly reluctant to leave. The things I grew accustomed to at that house numbed all of my body like this. My fingers unfolded cold and slowly. My tongue fell into disrepair, hardly working. And as for eyes, they are only so useful below a certain seeing-level: now I see shapes for shadows, and I make company out of spectres.

So I entered the house, noticing first the shady gloom that gathered in the corners, and how I could make use of it later. I could hear only the sound of my own breath, irregular and an intrusion to the silence. It seemed no matter where I went it would never be fully silent. I was realizing that then, but I never learned it. Only when the waves of sound stop, and the chatter of primordial energies in the brain ceases, do we remember that the sound of our heart heaving sticks with us, and it seems like it will stop at nothing to let us know that we are still alive. I hated my body for being so stuck up. Every breath I took became a tightening of my throat. I went looking through the house for some sort of remedy.

The stairs to the basement had been lopped off. Though that couldn't keep me away forever, it convinced me for the time being that there were other places to be. I went into the kitchen and poked around. Sugar, honey and flour were in the oak cabinet. A couple glasses still above the sink. I expectantly looked into the bread box. A few minutes later I was shoving buttered bread with sugar on top into my mouth. The flavors melted on my tongue in a way that I loathed. I looked around a little more. Everything was so unfathomably quiet, like a cabin no one knew existed in a wood not yet discovered, and I was the first to discover the site. The bedrooms were bare and depressing. I hardly went into them, as if the bodies that had slept in those beds were still there, trapped in a perpetual nap. I went out back and lit a cigarette, making sure the embers fell through the cracks in the deck. I wasn't prepared to set fire to something until it was rightfully mine. That night I made my decision that it would be good for me to stay.

I woke up on the floor. I cursed my back and it cursed me back. As I expected, I woke up not alone. That was what happened whenever I stayed anywhere. The shadows catch up with me, they track me down like trained dogs and desecrate me. I woke up smelling french toast. Sure enough, my Nana was in the kitchen, whipping up a storm. Her perfected recipe was being put to use in this decrepit kitchen. Her eggs, which she made with milk, were also sizzling in the pan. Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice in a pitcher. It seemed like a perfectly good way to end up on the toilet. Nana acted like she hadn't seen me in years, though it feels she's here at least every other day, making me eat things and getting me thinking about things I was getting away from. I asked her what she thought of the house.
"I don't know why you always act like the man of the house, when you are just the mouse," she said.
"I don't know what means."
"You eat, eat and think about it." She grabbed her STOP sign. "I have to make sure the kids get to school safely. I nearly got run over the other day. It's not easy what I do, you know! I have to stand right in the middle of the street! Cars pass me every which way! Someone's gotta do it, though. These kids, they're all looking at their phones or their game machines, none of them pay attention."
"I know, Nana." I watched her struggle with her boots.
"Someone's gotta do it," she said again. Then she was gone.

Can you hear them come? The legions of my leisure, the empty-handed army of my history, every single one of them on their single path, like deltas flowing into a single river, flowing directly to me. I never felt any immediate danger except from myself. It became a madhouse of mirrors: at every hour of the day I had another visitor, another piece of me protruding from my consciousness, or something to that extent. It was as if the lease of the house had been signed in the name of my misery. How I put up with it for so long, I'm not sure. Probably the hope that if I listened hard enough, the lesson would be learned. I never did do very well in school. I had heard that every twenty-something ought to have a mentor. I figured, why not accept everything as my mentor? I knew I had much to learn... but my eyes were already beginning to fail, from a lack of nutrients and too much time in front of the TV. I hated watching TV but it was the only thing that stayed the same, no matter how long I did it. It was like my life, in that way.

Not everyone that came to visit me was very helpful. Some came and never left. My first girlfriend, the only person to ever hand me the pearl, showed up with her boyfriend. They blew right past me to the bedroom, where they haven't left since. Now at all hours of the day I can hear him pleasuring her, and her emphatic "Ravage me!" and moaning. Her choice of words left me drunk on my own sadness. I sat staring at the TV, with a clock just over my head, featuring birds instead of numbers. When the clock struck cardinal, I grabbed my legs and forced them towards the backyard. My third grade teacher was planting geraniums in the garden. The old, gentle grouch who gave me my driver's test was painting the shed. The circus of everything made me uneasy. Afraid of who would join me in bed, I slept mostly on the floor. I listened to the TV half the time to save my eyes the strain.

Not too far from the house was a duck pond, at least for most of the year. When the cattails started to look like popsicles, the ducks stopped visiting, and I started to miss them. The only moments I had been somewhat alone since first being there had been sitting on this bench, watching them glide through the glass, well-protected by their patented duck-oils and completely resistant to wetness. I asked them, "How is it that you spend half your life in water and yet you know not water?" Growing frustrated when they failed to respond, I kept up my peevish questioning. "Do you even know the sky? Do you clean yourself of that, too? Or how about me?" When they disappeared, I knew that blaming myself was missing the central argument, and that even ducks have a time table to keep, but that didn't stop me from kicking the maple tree, losing my footing on the black ice, and losing consciousness for a few cold hours.

In my lack of consciousness, there was a room. The room was drowning in toys. I started to clear a path to my bed, like our mother told us to do every night, and before it was time for bed I began to read a book. It was bright, colorful, with a lot pictures. My brother was doing the same from across the room, having cleared his path just the same, lost in a world of pictures just like me. Suddenly the silence fractured like the window just above my feet. I couldn't imagine what had happened. I wanted to know. I got up and looked out the window but could see nothing but night. My mom screamed at me to get away from the window. The policeman had to look hard to find the small dark rock among the toys. Earlier that night, we saw my father on the steps of the apartment complex, with his elbows on his knees and a six-pack by his feet. My mom said something to him that I no longer remember him. He must have been so drunk-- he thought the window that he broke was his own.

The next morning my father appeared. I woke up bleary-eyed and pissed. I could not open my eyes for the first twenty minutes of our conversation. The sun had been too brave that morning and I hardly slept, tossing fits on the basement floor. The owls on the oak tree had been keeping watch for me. My father stood on the other side of the counter, spreading butter on a blueberry bagel. He asked me how my homework was doing. It was the same question he'd been asking me for ten years.
"I don't have homework any more, dad," was my answer. "You know that."
"If that's what you say."
He took a bite. The crunch was deafening. I thought about kicking him in the shin but I didn't know where to begin. I scratched the crown of my foot with my toe and opened my eyes.
"Since when did you get an eye piercing?"
"Since yesterday," he said, at least I think, blueberries in his teeth and everything, it made it hard to understand him.
"How's work?"
"I don't work any more. You knew that."
Except that I didn't. I couldn't look away from his eyes. The two golden rings he had fixed in his pupils made it look like my father could see nothing but gold. I kind of understood why he did it. "Did it hurt?"
"It hurt more without them, to be honest." My father, the tortured artist. It must have hurt him, being first an insurance salesman and then a janitor, two jobs farthest away on the spectrum of artistry. I'm sure he looked at numbers and saw elegant patterns. Or murals in the swirls of shit-colored water. But what's a man supposed to do with that? I wanted to ask him about it, but thought better of it. If he really was out of a job, he needed another soon. There was no end to the loans he accumulated over the years.
"How do you expect to find another job wearing those?"
He finished his bagel. "That answers your question." He took a cigarette from my pack on the counter, and disappeared out the back.

There was at last a night that I made the mistake of moving on. I had picked up smoking inside. Whatever respect I had for the house when I arrived had vanished. The peeling walls had already started to yellow from my being there, and from an outsider's glance, it seemed there was no end to the waste piling up in the house. Cigarette butts gathered in the corners, making foul-smelling nests for the mice. I fell asleep with the TV on again and a cigarette still lit in my mouth. Orange and yellow light danced in the darkness of my lack of dreams. I woke up with warm breath on my face. Even as I opened my eyes, I felt no alarm. The lights were brilliant, hot and perfect. They made marshmallows out of plastic furniture. The black streaks on the wall were dancing, bending to the groove of the fire, grooving their way from down to up, where blazing sheets of white fell from the ceiling. The mice ran around like little bottle rockets. I could smell burnt fresh toast in the kitchen, I could smell the geraniums melting in the garden, I could smell the ash of my own breath. Down the hall, they were still going at it. I hoped in the heat of the moment they would become fused together, flesh conjoined with flesh, to create a superior form of flesh, so that they would never come apart or feel empty inside. I tripped through the burning shit laying everywhere, looking for anything that I might need. The flames whipped my cheeks. Never was I so grateful for my own saliva. Nothing was recognizable once it was on fire. Everything became an extension of the flame. I felt for a moment that even I was no longer individual, no longer a person out of place, but fully in the place of the flame. Just a dancing blaze with an outline. An orange apparition out to devour everything.
I left the house feeling full and satisfied, followed by no one.

When I came to the pond, where the ducks had returned to sun themselves, I tenderly lowered myself into the water. The cool water brought my body no relief. It had grown resistant to wetness. I floated on my back, waiting for the laws of nature to kick in, but I put my faith in the wrong solutions. The bits of charred chandelier in my skin did not flake off. My hair continued to rage like it was the fourth of July. Smoke funneled out of my mouth, like a volcano on the island of my body, floating among the ducks. I waited a long time, listening for the breathing of my body. It slowed as the sun lowered. I was unable to put out my fire. I took one last cigarette out of my pocket. It crumbled as I put it into my mouth. Then there was nothing but water, nothing but shapes above the watery film in front of me, the shadowy boats of ducks going through their channels, every which way but towards me.

Isis

What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
So confessed Dylan,
with Isis just through the recording studio glass,
maybe with pride in her eyes
or just watching the bow of the violin
(which was not out of place)
glide across her heart,
springing grass from the vital pump.
On the fifth day of May
the cordial sentence was struck.
There shall be no more searching:
not for the blinded rubies of the tomb,
or not for blankets, which you freely
gave away to a common stranger.
It wasn't freezing in the desert
that ripped your fingers off
the sickle that carves out May.
It wasn't when you left
to pursue the elemental
curiosity of Indiana Jones.
It was something more sad,
more real than the emperor
playing the breezy violin
until the dawn collapses.
What drove him insane,
what drives us all, is that
we ain't got no money.

Olympia Fallen

Peach of a woman:
you have a way of carrying yourself,
the way that Sisyphus carried
the weight of his deceit
in the form of a boulder.

Your shoulders are draped in silk,
your skin the color of milk
and your bored, luxurious face.
You cross your legs because
it's a business for you to own things.

Behind you stands your slave.
For now your lesser and soon
your equal outlaw, your wood
to your fire, the spoon to your soup.
Soon you'll both be in the coop.

Your flower is a wilted apricot.
Your lady in waiting is hungry.
Do not ignore the brass bells
of change: they seek you out,
to furnish your pillows with
the geraniums of going.

best comes dawn

Skeletal, unbound

hammering

of the morning mist:

a calcified cloud

emerging from the kiln

of steamy night.

Withering weather,

unspooled from the

harness of atmosphere,

you lick the streets clean

in your feline hungering.

Into the yawn you delve,

your baggy smock loose,

poised to prick the knot

with fingers you yarn

among dark wetness

and amorous onset
of morning.

Spook the arched-

back cat,

pool the milk of mists

toward your comrades.

They thirst
for your divine permission,

and seek your wisdom
in the dews,

            the blue grass,

the hush
            at the helm
of the hammering.

I Am In A Good Place

I won't call it heaven

'cause it's not mine to keep,

but I can see its borders

when I watch her sleep.

avalon

below lies camelot and all that follows
below roams the concrete mammoth that
bellows lies and trumpets oh brass blast
fast track industrial shine you get in my eye

the window's half-notched
air is full cool blast damn
does this cabin get cold

with every plane i board
i get a little bit old

the cars all move at equal speeds
which must be the same trick
that the earth plays on space

i can see clear through the navel
of the sky we bravely plunge
through the wet lint

and feel the falling

i am the ant
my little airborne carapace
glued to my tiny ant-head
sewn by milky threads
of ivory like string cheese
or like silk 

spun by a web of geese

swat

for every bug i squish -
the black, broken ones
the tiny red spiders
the headless junebugs
the ripped moth
like the moon's veil
unsheathed
by my fingers -
i extract a
bean sized
bag of blood
from the vein
of the earth.
i take what
i cannot be punished
for taking.
i kill a fly
to get back at the sky
for always watching me.

Humanid

Lumps of heat roll off the clouds,
falling away at the skirt of the void.
Amarillo heatdrops reconvene
mere inches apart, and fade to smoke.

Tendrils of wind split apart,
smothering altars in gold
and soaking the banks
with their weightless dread.

Independent of the idea
and one with the drive,
they scurry and deposit
and resonate like a hive.

A sandstorm of eggshells
leaving nothing but yoke.

Nothing Comes Out

This is the flavor of failure.
My fucked up arrival
to the ash-gilded street.
A pattern in spite of my attempts
to do away with contempt.
This is my elliptical sorry.
This is my editorialized sorrow.
The ceiling crumbles like snow.
The thick-armed creature
of darkness carries my bones.
It reserves its judgments
and lays them at my bed.
It is no serious threat.
Its dawn-eyed dolls
are just the mess of my mind.
I should hang them
in the doorway
to keep the moths away.
I should turn off the light.
Bottle up a drop of the sun
as if it were a bug.
There are many who own me.
I am simply borrowed property.
This leaves me wanting.
I have been abandoned
by both factions,
the wanted and the wanting.
Deciphering the difference
is better left for the birds.
I envy those bulletproof talons.
Soon I'll have a pair myself.
No one has faith in me,
to become a bird
and one day take off. Yet
talons were built for those
who plummet from the sky.
My business sense is keen
as my attention to my heart:
which sputters
like a mangled engine,
which coughs like
a contractor, and shits itself like a baby.
I am a borrowed somebody.
Who left this in charge?
I have no control over the controls.
I am led by a green light
to a centrifuge of muffled memories.
I see royal black lakes with no bottom.
At night I clutch whatever I can.
Looking backwards,
only the undergrowth is visible,
the tufts of selfish behavior
sticking out like broken thumbs.
The past brews dark with the grounds
of so many ground up fantasies,
and my conscience swirls like a cream.
The more I filter, the more mixed it seems.
Now nothing comes out true or pure.
I have made sure.
I have nodded at the sunrise,
sucked the sweet from the sublime,
and counted every side of the die.
I am every one hundred pounds a lie.

Taken By

The parts of me that feel missing
get blown down the street: the silk hand,
the amber look, the deep green kissing
that keeps me rooted to my feet.

In these kind of badlands one
could go extinct: thirsting for honey
or milk, an apparition of the sun,
warm at night and gone with a blink.

The transient wind in throes
awakens the lake: the bejeweled
waves blinding me as I throw
out my line, waiting for it to take. 

Anchor

Come closer, April, as I seize advantage of you.

I ship my worries through your channels,
watching expectantly the hardened shore,
attempting to gather shells with which
their combined force I might blast open
the one-way wormhole from my ear
to the bottom of the lullaby sea.
The shell evolves into a telephone
just for me. Spanning several summers,
my voice uncoils into melancholy,
a hot whisper knowing not the depth
of the ocean, but plunging deeper still
to the sandy bottom where I left you in my soul.

Soap

So you left the soap in your mouth a little too long.
Big deal. It burns and turns into a bitter creme,
it might make you cry but it's your own damn fault
for being obscene. Your words hold you up
and your words hold you down. Spit it up,
or keep it down. No one is stopping you now.
Go ahead, show us how much you've grown.
Practice your very adult-like tone of voice.
Intonation, detonation. Defuse the youth
in you and pry your priorities from the groove.
It's your move. Say something delicious.
Or say nothing at all, else you lose. 

feast

Like like like
who woulda
thunk it that
the thunder
would be so
mean: that
the prodigal
son would
ever have a
dream beyond
himself, that
he would accept
a feast if it
were brought
to his feet.
Like he
doesn't eat
meat.
So a feast
of carrots
& onions
& celery
might
deliver you
from this
trap of
scarred
celibacy.

Cuisine

If I could eat a word
and chew it like bamboo,
and strip down the absurd
with the flick of my tongue,
I'd ask for more than one.

I could eat soap or sepulcher,
an aplomb, a nexus or fetus,
whatever's not a spider or ogre.
I once had doubt and taboo:
bitter, no doubt, and crumbly too.

Lately I eat more carefully.
That other night when you cried,
I felt that word all over inside.
The drunk hornet harasses the hive.
That word, it eats me alive.

Stagger

This bum bee
thinks he knows me.

Never trust stripes.
Never go to Mexico,

say the people
who never go to Mexico.

I thought maybe the bee
would attempt a trade,

maybe a drop of his comb
for a wedge of my hair.

But he kept running into me

with his slow dumb siege,

knocking on my jeans--

really, just bothering me.

I turned his stripes
into a mush of gold,

never quite forgiving.

Hunger Games

Fat nutritionist
help nobody:
knows nobody
'cept her
gumdrop body.

She ain't ashamed
to play the game.

She waits
with a butter knife

to poke your life;
to feed your scale

to a passing whale.

Breakfast

When I eat a bowl of charms,
and my fingers are caked
with the dust of many moons,
I am not fit for manhood.

I am only a balloon-faced kid
devouring powdered luck
for greater cosmic gain.
My methods are elementary.

Yet the shoulders of giants
have been cleared for my landing.

I will ladle the sky for some stars
and melt them beneath my tongue.

Projectile Velvet

On the day of love
I woke up
covered in sweat,
having lingered
too long
in a dark dream.
That shadow
put a chill in me.
But I bundled
up my doubts
and spun them
into a bouquet:
spent the rest
of the day
with a spine
of frost.
Then I got lost.
I was sick
for days,
not enjoying
a sound sleep,
not eating
my fill,
and I saw so
many faces
in the dregs
of my dreams
that I wanted
to kill.
Like just now,
there was
a girl
holding a sign
advertising
coffee and buns
and you saw
me glance at
her and asked
"Who's that?
Is she the one?"
Then my limbs
went slack
and red,
and the birds
gathered
to split
the bread.

oh lovely lady

i can tell from the way
you fill up your days
that you've gone and gotten older.
you sleep somewhat more responsibly
and your coffee's gotten darker.
i've watched you flower
out of the hours we planted,
for a good year we've toiled
and it's all i really wanted.
there is too much about you
that is easy to miss:
your hands like sheets,
your chlorophyl kiss,
the way your rings make purple
rings around your fingers,
the way we say goodnight three
times, and then linger,
the way your rainbow appears
long before the rain,
the way you always sit near
the back of a bus or train,
the way you look at me
even when you're angry,
the way your nose goes cold
if it drops a couple degrees,
the way your elbows make scarecrows
out of the straw in me,
the way the lines of your smile
straighten the miles of storms,
the way your perfume drips
from the petals of your lips,
the way your hip bones pierce
the fierce fog of night,
and your eyes rubbed clean
from a dream of a year,
you're a woman more than ever.
happy birthday, sweet dear.

The Swan In The Garden

In the stillness, the moon made the whole garden seem white. The bright wash of light left nothing alone. Every twig, leaf, stalk, and insect looked like an ivory chess piece. Flowers were drained of their rosy complexion. Only the lake, which encircled the garden completely, was large enough to keep its true color. The garden was a moon itself, flanked on all sides by night water. Like all shrouded sanctuaries, no one could ever find it by looking. It takes accidental courage, and sorrow, for such a radiant isle to appear at the end of a weary journey. Where the dark sheet of the lake gave way to ground, in the milky grass, a man sat trying to remember the name his mother gave him.

He listened nightly to the garden. A few crickets peppered the air. Every now and then, small fish leapt from the water, with their splashes echoing off the surface, and the tall willow, the only sign of life in the garden visible from the outer edge of the lake, sighed as the wind wound through it. When these sounds performed together, it brought peace to his mind. But if for some reason the crickets stopped, and the wind ceased, and the fish felt pinned under the moon, as they did tonight, there was not a single noise. The Man In The Garden was alone— until a sudden rustling in the reeds woke him from his loneliness.

"Is something there?" The rustling grew louder. The man picked up his stick and tapped the ground lightly. He had not heard anything other than music in the garden before. "Why don't you come out and say hello?"

Just then, the rustling stopped. The man kept his stick stiffly in his hand as a pale white swan waddled out between the shoots of ivory. It could hardly be seen except for its tiny, hard eyes, which it kept fixed on the man. He could feel it scanning his spirit, looking for signs of aggression and buried sins. His blood started rushing, and for the first time in years he felt his life burning in his chest. All from the appearance of the Swan.

"What are you?" he asked.

"A swan, my friend. A swan, and the Son of God."

~

The Man In The Garden was not too religious. His faith was built out of the blocks he stacked as a child. As a child, his mother used to take him to an evangelical service, but the prophetic boom of the pastor bounced off the rafters and scared him. He found Sunday School even worse. He loved being read to by the women with kind voices, but the other kids would whoop and throw fits, and he could hardly hear the lessons over the wreck. He took an intense disliking to Sunday School, and began to throw fits of his own over his cereal every Sunday morning. His mother stopped bringing him. "If you don't want Jesus," she said, "Jesus doesn't want you."

~

"Don't joke with me."

"I wouldn't joke with you, my friend."

"Swans don't talk."

"I talk."

The man shifted uncomfortably, loosening his grip on the stick. He knew he was in the presence of something both small and mighty. The adrenaline had worn off from before, replaced by a calm cluelessness. However the Swan could talk, it only mattered to the man that it kept talking.

"I've come to talk with you about some things. I know you've gone far, and that you are probably tired, and you are feeling at the end of your days. For this reason, I have made my way to you. I bring only my company. Would you care if I came closer?" The Swan took a few padded steps forward, then stopped to await an answer. "I would like us to speak closely: if you talk soft enough, you can slip past the ear of God. Especially in places like this, conversations sound to him like butterflies rubbing their wings. Then again, he likes to listen for those. May I come closer?"

He began to cry. No one had been kinder to him than the Swan in a long time. The voice was so calm and warm, and sincere in its tone, that the man could not properly interpret it. He tasted warm salt, and felt a spasm of hunger in his stomach. It had been two days since he had found a few mustard seeds, and he ate them so quickly, he forgot he had eaten at all.

"Let’s work on getting you something to eat.” The Swan wandered over to the base of the willow and opened up his wings. With a few strong thrusts, he was suddenly at the top of the tree, where the long, sad stems of the willow grew down and outwards. Gently he snapped a few strands from their base, and they fell to the ground like air. Returning to where the man sat facing the water, the Swan went to work on the fallen branches. “This kind of thing was easier when I had hands, but it should work. I only hope that the fish feel your plight, and will come willingly once I finish this net. There. Now, I could use someone to tie these knots. ”

Still shaken, the man swallowed and crawled in the grass toward where the branches were laid out in a grid. While he struggled to fasten the knots, the Swan drew close to him and resumed talking. “I know this overwhelms. Long you have suffered an avoidable misery, and with no one to blame, your heart has hardened to venom. Your eyes gather shadow yet reflect the light. Even your feet suffer without reason. So much water around you, and yet you do not bathe? The earth has stuck to your skin like worries after a bad dream. They do not need to weigh you down.” The man bit his lip again, listening to the words as they chipped away at his solitude. He could hardly stop his hands from trembling as he picked up the net, proud he had done something useful.

“That’s excellent! A net worthy of the disciples, even. Peter would be proud. Let’s test it out, shall we?” The Swan flapped his wings out of excitement, and hobbled over into the water, trusting that the man would be behind him. The Swan floated on the lake, preening his feathers and watching the man slowly roll up his trousers. He walked up to the edge of the water, with the flimsy net in his hands, unsure what to do next. 
“Into the water, yes, that’s right.”

 Obeying the Swan with child-like trust, The Man In The Garden jumped into the lake, leaving his stick on the bed of grass.

~

            The man’s face was covered in soot. For a few difficult months he had been working as a coal miner, laboring in the belly of the earth for almost no pay. The foreman had refused to hire him at first, but he pleaded that he had a wife with a child on the way, and that no one else would give him work. Only the latter was true. But the foreman felt pity, and agreed to let the man work as long as he didn’t get in the way. So the man always went furthest into the mine, where he could hear no other sounds but his pickaxe working at the rock.

            That’s where he was, caked with grime and sweat, when the ground began to tremor and a splitting sound echoed off the walls. He stumbled back towards the mouth of the cave. There wasn’t a trace of light. Horrified, he realized that there was no getting out— the ceiling of stone had fallen in and trapped him.

He could see nothing.

   

~

            Stooped in the tall grass, the Swan was doing as any other swan would—making deposits. The man was sitting beneath the willow, digging his fingers into the silvery guts of a limp fish. Juices slid down his chin and neck. The water had renewed his sense that he was human, encouraging his hunger. He bit into scales, organs, eyes— it didn’t matter. The Swan rose and made his way over to the tree, leaving a small pile of pellets near the reeds. “I see you don’t waste any of the fish,” he observed. “That’s good.”

            “Well, it’s the least I owe it,” said the man. His jump into the lake had not only refreshed his spirit, it had loosened his tongue as well. The Swan already had done more for him than he ever thought to do for himself. No longer did he feel useless: he was grateful. Still, he  doubted his sanity, but as long as he had good meat to eat, it only mattered that he was alive. The Swan was back to preening his feathers, waiting with patience for the man to finish his meal. “Why’d you become a swan?”
            “It was an easy decision. Swans know how to love. Their rude manners and plainness can’t hide that swans love all too well. They mate for life. And they accept God without knowing it, which is the best manner of acceptance. I have been a swan for a very long time. Back when I was much more like you, I could never have lasted this long. I was too easily noticed, then. But I suppose that was the idea.”

            “I thought you wanted to be noticed?” he asked as he pulled a thin bone from between his lips, placing it in a neat pile with the others.

            “You mean my Father told me to get noticed. He arranged the stars to announce my arrival. They noticed me the minute I was born. My mission began with my first breath.”

            “What mission was that?” The man wasn't sure whether or not the answer was obvious. The Swan did not give away any signs, but only preened his feathers and let out a soft honk. 

             “As a baby, I would not have been able to tell you. I only cried and cried. Until I grew up and death met me at the rendezvous. If I were to ever come back, I would skip all that crying, and pick up right where I left off.”

The man stopped eating and wiped his mouth. “Back?”

            The Swan nodded. “To try again.”

        As the first time they had met, the man was too stunned to say anything. A choir of crickets started again somewhere. The magnitude of the night in the garden had not extended beyond his world. He had not thought of anyone beside himself since he had met the Son of God. The Swan had not given him a single opportunity.

            “But I would rather not. I was misunderstood. You must know, spilled water cannot be poured back. My voice would drown and be buried beneath controversy. Those that would have me will not expect me. They will expect me as I was. I realize they cannot know just how quickly the world has changed. I have stayed a part of it, as I was born to be. My father will not have me in Heaven— I was right. When I died, my Father ignored me."
For the first time, there was sadness in the Swan's voice.
 Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Because he wanted a son on Earth. I thought I had achieved something, when I was here. My heart was pure and I died for what I believed in, hurting no one in the process. I had died for the world. I only wish I had the same opportunity to join my father in the Kingdom of Heaven. I have watched many pass, and I weep when I watch, because I know that they are blessed. Not by my actions or my father’s actions, but by their actions. Miracles are small and fortunate things. But that miracle, being allowed into Heaven— that is the miracle everyone was born with, except me.”

            For the first time, there was sadness in the Swan’s voice. “This is one of my favorite places to be. God knows it. He knows it because I know it. And I know that now, he is watching us.” Hearing this, the man couldn’t help but feel incredibly small.

            “How do you know?”

            “Because he sent me here for you.”

            Thoughts of being dead were resurfacing in the man’s mind. His life kept getting bigger and bigger than him; he was sure somewhere along the way it popped and took him with it. Then he remembered the lake, and jumping straight in, even though the Swan only meant for him to toss the net. He made that choice because he was alive. Sure of that, he still held on to the possibility of it all being a dream.

            “To give you comfort, and ask a question of you. I hope that it isn’t too hard. The only required answer is one that you are sure of, that you mean to the fullest, and that you add up every moment of your life to arrive at the precise answer. Nothing will happen to you either way, I promise on Creation itself. You will have your house in Heaven, which no one can take from you. You may take as long as you want to answer, but don’t let the question bring any more questions. Take it, and think firmly of your answer.”  

            The man’s heart was racing. He trusted the Swan, but still had fear in his quaking hands. The vastness of the sky was making him dizzy. He breathed deep through his nose. He had to know. “What’s the question?”

            “Can you believe in me?”

~

            The Man In The Garden was very lucky.

            Stuck in the stomach of a mountain, he could see nothing. His candle snuffed out the moment the mine fell in. He tripped and hobbled through the mine, and wondered how his mother would take the news that her son has gone missing. She would know he was dead. And as these thoughts started eating away at him, with not much left of him but a skeleton with the will to be free, he found the exit that saved his life. A forgotten mine shaft, far on the other side of the mountain. He emerged from the mine and fell to the ground laughing.

            His laughter did not hold for very long. Regardless of where he thought he was, or how long he walked for, he could not find his way. He decided that he would give up on his mother as she had given up on him. He wasn’t so good on his own, but he adjusted. No one made any remark to him. He passed, often they gave, and he gave his thanks in return—not wanting anyone’s pity, he usually passed quickly. Though in some places he did stop longer than others.

            For two years, he stayed with a family that owned a farm. He helped with the animals in exchange for food, and slept behind the barn, until the eldest son put a gun on him, after his girlfriend claimed the man had groped her.

            For seven years, he worked at a sewing machine. Every day the sweat from his forehead would drip onto his hands, and his hands often slipped.

            For eleven years, he was sent to jail for the murder of a banker. He hardly defended himself and was sentenced thirty years. He was let out when they discovered they had the wrong man.

            Then, for twenty years, he looked for his mother. That’s what brought him to the garden. That tiny, crescent-shaped garden in the center of a lake, invisible to the indifferent. That was where he had met Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God.

                       

~

            The white of the garden was beginning to wash away. Only the Swan kept its color as the streaks of the sun spilled over the distant ridge.

            “I will ask until you answer. Can you believe in me?”

            The man could not say yes. He did not want to say no, but the longer he sat with the Swan, and the more he ruminated, the more he was sure that his mind had deteriorated, and that the events of the night were either a dirty trick of his mind, or that he was asleep in a world more beautiful than his own. Though when he thought about it more, he decided it did not matter whether it was real or not. It did not even matter if he was dying, and that he would have to tell no one about the Swan In The Garden. He knew that he would have kept it secret all his life. He would have been able to tell no one that he loved Jesus, and that Jesus loved him. It would have twisted him inside like a fever, and snapped his spirit in half to know that he would never meet Christ in Heaven. It would have been better to have not met him at all. His cheeks felt warm again from tears.

            “I cannot believe in you, oh Lord. I cannot be your witness, for I have sinned.”

            The Swan dropped his head, then brought it up to itch his right wing.

            “I knew it. That's what I said to him, ‘Father, they are not ready for me.’ And he told me that if I came to the garden, I would find a man who could truly believe in me, and if he did, it would mean that they are ready for me to return as a man. The thought of it.”  The Swan honked in relief. “Sorry to put you through all that, and that I can’t stay any longer. But I do have a mate, you know. If I get back before the sun’s fully up, she won’t even notice I’ve been gone.” The Swan wandered over to a bush, and plucked a leaf with his beak. He approached the Man, who seemed finally ready for sleep. Jesus handed him the leaf.

            The man wiped his face. “Thank you.”

            “I thank you more,” the Swan said, pressing the top of his head into the flesh of his cheek. “I gave you shelter for a night. In return, you have kept me hidden. I hope one day we will be seated together in my Father's house.”

            With that, he turned around, opened his wings, and briefly thought of taking off. But remembering a man from his past, who was in darkness until Jesus brought the world to light, the Swan folded his wings up and wheeled around. "Why do you carry that stick with you?"

            This caught the Man off guard. "I need it.”

            The Swan wagged its head. "My son. Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you."

            As Jesus turned around to walk towards the water, the milky blue of the man’s broken eyes began swirling, and he knew he was not in a dream. He had wanted for so long to see, he had almost forgotten that life had anything to see at all. He remembered his mother’s face, and how often she had let him touch it, feeling the bags of skin under her eyes and the lobes of her ears. How he wanted to see her, and hold her before it was his turn to die. A few leftover memories ran their final course down his face. The darkness that hung over his eyes started to soften, and small patches of light began appearing, like the first few notes of the first concerto ever played. All at once life was music, and all its stunning pictures created a radically different sound: the sky was filled with strings, the grass was a trilling piccolo, the reeds blew a loud horn, mountains all around were crashing and beating, and the deep, sad organ of the earth held everything together so tremulously. The clouds, when he could stop squinting and look up at them, looked like no Heaven he had seen in his heart. And the Swan was out on the lake, paddling away from the garden, straight into the rise of the sun, leaving not a single ripple behind him.

~