THREADCOUNT

circus of puffins

A circus of puffins clings to the cliffs with orange feet and, wearing their master of ceremonies colors, eyes close together looking worried and continually slightly surprised, stretching their necks, their heads moving bam bam bam. They are their own dreams, their own performers. The heights are unbelievable. The sound silent. The grass on the rocks hyper-green against their orange beaks.

They lift one leg and put their weight on the leg standing, their full bodies, swaying over. They switch legs as they walk to the edge of the cliff, swaying their bodies back and forth like old men. They turn their heads. They turn them again. And twist. They have conquered time. They have entertained you without you knowing it. You never suspected. But the orange visualizing neurons in your brain turned on, orange, orange, really really orange. Your brain likes orange. Your brain is nervous on the edge of a cliff.

Your brain knows a circus of puffins would never raise their webbed feet like orange umbrellas overhead, balancing themselves on their thick orange beaks on tricycles pushed along the edges of the cliff by rampancy and recklessness. They will never swing off the edge or cross to another on a tightrope, wearing emerald green tutus over their fancy suits, balancing the wind on their outstretched wings, and clouds that tear through them, fight their vision, wet their feet, and make them sing.

But scientists say part of your brain dreams all the time, the subconscious playing around with colors underground. And in that part the puffins on the rocks are doing circus acts so wild, so sexy and life-changing, they make you want to spread your legs and dance low down and leap high up and spin that bottom around and waggle off the cliff and go flying off the edge and never come down and never come down.

 

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ascension of larks

An ascension of larks rises from the sky into the other sky, more pale, more make-believe, and then, we have the answers, all of them, falling on us like warm snow, that melts us with its truth, its pure geometry, its snowmen it makes of us all, lumpen and going nowhere and wearing scarves only because our mothers made them for us, hunkered over in front of the fireplace. We know, we know we are those mothers, we are made of their bones, their hearts, their spleens ascended, transformed, no longer those molecules, but make-believe geometries of them in patterns that can change into drifts that blow in the wind. We see nothing is underneath, hunkered over, telling us we should have ever done anything different from what we did.

Geometries have changed by miracles underfoot, have flown into acceptance of our livers, our gall bladders, our dogged history lessons, our misshapen vases. All the muscles in our chest, in our scalps, in our excuses and our revisions. Nothing we have ever done should have been different. And the larks are flying, the larks are singing that every moment was glorious, a spark, a gleam, a joke.