If you’re not who I think you are, you should be. Your stature for one thing. Worthy of a uniform. Soldierly to say the least. Just waiting for the call to arms. Snap that head to the awestruck image of yourself in the local Walmart window—a few more trips around the block— not to be missed by the new neighbour’s daughter—in cleated boots they could hear tomorrow— Bang, Bang, Bang! Back to the house, up them steps, and report to yourself!

Tired of being yourself?
Could be worse.
You were almost twins.

It’s simple I know, but I’ve always wanted to be in the centre of celebration. Any celebration.  Okay, not the centre maybe, in the way of self-approval. Even outside looking in at gatherings of like-minded people sharing a single moment of togetherness, gladness, harmony.

Or: across the street from it, watching, catching the overall glow of it.

Or: okay, outside the province even, hoping to get a ride to where the celebration is before it’s called off for rain or supper, and I’m left picking up trampled handbills and trying to blow up punctured balloons among echoes of abandoned gaiety and airborne germs from all the hurrahs that were not mine. Then going to a bar and getting shit-faced before going home and stepping on a rake that closes up my eyes for the rest of summer. That kind of thing.

Wait, now. . . . Is that a parade?

Blame? For what?
Walking home behind your mother
who was toting heavy bags?
Your hands were in your pockets
and you’d just now put them there.
It meant you’d have to catch up
and she hadn’t turned around.
How would she know if it was you?
And look how often you had tried
to look like someone else at home.
And from the side, or turned around
you could’ve been a boarder
who had trouble with their names,
a strange and distant boarder
whom they wouldn’t have to notice
even just to pass the butter.
and your lips would sew together
and your footprints wouldn’t read
and they’d all become forgetful
when calling out your name.
You’d have no one there to give to
and nothing more to get.
Excuse me? Nothing more to get?
And the bags weren’t all that heavy.

How does one fully know what you can do when lulled or cursed in shadows not your own, that bridled you when you were sleeping or plied by one’s over-kindly carriers of drink not meant to cure?

WHAT WAS THAT? A perfect moment? Where did it come from, and why doesn’t it stay? Was it saying, “Perfection is possible, but that’s all you get until you know it better?” All of a sudden, like that. And if it had a voice, it would have said, “Nothing  serious. I’m just saying hello. Got to go now.”

Had those, have you? The briefest of moments? Absolute serenity. How about a string of them? No. Doesn’t work like that. It is what it is. But it knew exactly what it was doing, to pass on a message that it wouldn’t repeat, if you hadn’t had the proper humanity to appreciate it or speak it’s language. It had to be yours. Had to be. These are your insides. The party is yours. The candles, the guest- list, you. However skimpy, short-lived, in it’s patience. As if you were invited by accident. It’s happened that way on every other occasion. But normally it’s a flash of beauty, settling quickly, aspiring, promising to stay if you are strong enough to receive that exquisite moment before the door is shut to you again . . . or not.

Still there? Seamless, with no hint as to how or when it would slip away again. A moment that had shouldered aside anything even vaguely negative, lasering its way through boring sameness, stronger than the most stubborn ennui; defeating, dissolving stupid fear, as if fear has never been considered. Teasing at times: “Stay. We might as well be friends,” it seems to be saying. “Use me. Walk about inside me, without fear of ever having to step outside ever again or surrender to anyone. Think me! Inflate me, till this tiny perfection becomes your norm, and you its Landlord. Indulge it . . . dispense it if you want . . . generously now—kindly now—while it remains, determinedly, yours. Never had that? Sorry. Oh, you have. You waited there. I know. It doesn’t hang about.

True, he hadn’t been out of the woods since they changed the face on the two-dollar bills—of which now there were none—and  he’d had a rustic dust-coated memory of what women still looked like, starting with lipstick.  No trouble there!

And there they were.

“Women,” said he. “Talk about your  Farmer’s Market!”

One thing he didn’t count on was  the shouting. And—a lot of it—pretty much in his direction.  “Some popular!” Although the name-calling was different. Confused him only for a second, but didn’t  stop him.

Swung in step with anyone  whose legs were  poking out from under their coat—promising her nothing but bad breath—took her by the wrist of the same hand that made him bleed, and left him even more speechless than was his habit. Not exactly what he’d remembered. What had he known? Chopping down trees for the paper mill . . . since the Korean war, he’d missed the headlines completely. This was frightening! They were all mad as hell at someone. Couldn’t have been him.

Good Lord,  sure, what was the first thing he did when he was born? He lay down and let a woman  change him, wash him, wipe him, turn him over and slap his arse. Pretty much what he went looking for on the Saturday night of the long day that the ladies of the town took to their equality march. “Well, there wasn’t much of anything fair about that,” said he, and  back he went to the bush to commiserate with his half-sawn tree, in time to hear “TIMBER” once, and his name, not at all.

What a life.

At the end of whatever you go in search of—there  is you. The light behind it all. You are the wizard behind the curtain.

I once sat silently by the bedside of a dying friend. I could come up with nothing to say just short of an eternity that might be suitable, and felt dishonest, as though I’d been tossing off those very important few last seconds of our altogether noteworthy friendship, wherein we had never parted without providing the other with equal appreciative byplay.

I asked him if it was tough to leave, and he said, in  a very pleasant tone, “It beats incontinence.”

Why did he have to say that?

A new idea at its purest should at best be left alone to fully gather honest claim, not stretched to over-weaning, tapering limply to a flaccid end for weak and easy accolades. Just trust the ground for what it was—precise and heart-felt, nothing more. And then and only will your brand new thought have the power to over-power, as the curtain falls, leaving those with open mouths and half-thought come-backs, dribbling on their patent shoes, agreed with by their over-costumed dates.