If my imaginary friend had more brains I’d trust her advice, but when Alice tells me something I have to examine it from all angles, especially those angles I forget to check. It might be the best advice I’ll get today, but I really should be getting it tomorrow–or yesterday.
I once told her that a neuroscientist would likely think she was some configuration of neurons acting up in my head. She observed, “They don’t know jack. Do you really think I’m a figment of your imagination?” She expected an answer, and silence wouldn’t do, so I tried dodging the question by saying, “I don’t even know what my imagination is!” She didn’t think I had one either.
“What do you think that crow means in the sky?” Alice gazed at some bird.
“What crow?”
“The one in front of your face. And you think I’m in your imagination? You’re too dumb for me to fit in there.”
Then I think I saw what she was referring to: “That bird?”
“You better get your phone out before it’s too late–Ah!! Too bad. It’s too late. It’s gone.”
That saved me from getting out my phone.
“So what do you think it meant?” Her questions are not speculations for someone sitting in a parallel universe or falling through a black hole or bobbing back and forth in some time wormhole to contemplate. She demands real answers in the real world.
“Well, you know, it could mean anything.”
“Come on, brainless! Black crow, blue sky, flying by. What’s the message?”
“Do you know?” I might as well ask the one with brains.
Two lovers lie upon their bed
Made from a tree. They rest their heads
While in the distance there is strife.
They safely rest, imagine life
Without those worries and it’s then
They find their love alive again.
But when to them the fighting nears
They arm themselves in spite of fears
And fight defending what they know
Of good, of truth to help them grow.
Whatever happens that is when
They find their love alive again.
Bernard lived with his aunt, a widow without children, for the spring semester of the third grade. He was familiar with his aunt’s home where she held Christmas Eve parties late after Midnight Mass. His parents enrolled him in the nearby parish school.
His aunt would send him on errands to the grocer. On his first errand he brought back a loaf of bread, among other items as requested, and his aunt frowned. “See how you’ve pressed this loaf? It is ruined. How can I toast it? You think my money grows on trees! You’re selfish!” On future errands he paid special attention to the bread.
Realizing Bernard didn’t have a rosary, his aunt gave him one. She pointed out the five sets of ten beads for the Hail Marys separated by a bead for the Our Father. She explained the three sets of five mysteries that one had to think about when reciting the prayers. Although eager to learn and fascinated with the beads’ magic, Bernard was confused. He had more questions than his aunt had time for. One night he walked into her bedroom holding the rosary. “I don’t know if I skipped one. My fingers slipped. Does it count? Do I have to start over?” She told him to go back to bed and not bother her. The next day he was sent to the rectory after school.
In the rectory Bernard was told that his aunt wanted the priest to talk to him about “scruples”. Bernard was embarrassed and he didn’t remember what the priest said, but this was his first realization that the magic was very deep. Over the decades he came to understand that it was not just Catholic or Buddhist rosaries or Hindu mantras. The magic included every single word humans said or even thought to each other. He looked back on that five-minute visit with a parish priest as a life-changing miracle.
After that semester, his parents took him back to his old school. The parties at his aunt’s stopped. In a few years, his aunt moved to a drier climate for her health. He did not see her again, except unexpectedly once many years later when Bernard rented a house with five other graduate students.
As Bernard was heading toward the kitchen, he saw the top half of his aunt appear about ten feet in front of him. She was walking away as she turned to him. Her words appeared in his mind: “I’m sorry.” What could she be sorry for? Bernard remembered the deformed bread. He mentally thought, “It’s OK.” She vanished.
Three days after seeing his aunt, his mother called him. She told him his aunt died a few days ago. They were just informed. His aunt did not want his father to drive the distance to the funeral and what little she had she left to the church.
Bernard told his mother that his aunt appeared to him. He didn’t tell her about his aunt’s message. He never told his parents about that damaged loaf of bread and he didn’t want them to think badly of her now. Simply saying he saw a ghost would be enough of a shock and maybe worth a joke the next time they met. He didn’t mind. He was too old to be sent to the priest.
I met Bernard when he was retired living in a high-rise condo. Looking out the window at a party, we saw two pigeons playing like children over the tops of houses as the sun set deepening the shadows. They reminded him of his father and his aunt, now both deceased. He found it hard to imagine either of them as children although now he had no problem imagining them as birds. It occurred to Bernard that maybe his aunt’s message wasn’t for him but for his father, her brother, and he failed in his task that day to pick up the phone and tell his dad that he should give his sister a call.
After hearing this story from Bernard, I teased him. “Hey! Did all this really happen?” He thought for a while and said, “I suppose this story is a mixture of truth and fiction. The part I can’t forget, and the part you probably found unbelievable, is the part that actually happened. The rest, the parts you probably found believable enough, are the parts I can’t remember so well. It is as close to the truth as I know but telling the full truth about anything is thankfully impossible and unnecessary.”
Jillys2016 offered a July Challenge for collaborative poetry. One poet writes the first half of a poem and then another poet finishes it. My four line poem “Home Tour” may be used for this challenge. Pretend it is supposed to be an eight line poem and write the second half.
Here I try to complete Charley’s first half. Charley’s part is in bold red. It is a quadrille, a poem of 44 words. He provided the first 22 words. I have to add the next 22 words of the poem.
The bird broke my concentration when he pecked the door.
“Anatomy of Melancholy” from my fingers fell.
Closed, it hit the floor.
The bird came in.
He said, “Lenore.”
I said, “What?”
“Nevermore.”
“Never mind?”
“Anymore.”
I boot¹ the bird
and shut the door.
¹Some may argue that what I should have written is “I shoot the bird”, because it sounds better and that is what they would have done, but I will refrain from comment.
Photo: “Ever Growing” by the author linked to K’lee and Dale‘s Cosmic Photo Challenge on the topic of alien artifacts. I am hoping the pots will serve as alien artifacts where we are the invaders and plants are seeing if they can make use of our advanced technology.
I’m exploring medieval lyrics. I think the above might be called “trova romantica” with form and style related to the troubadours. I’m trying to use the Portuguese Redondilha maior meter, a seven syllable line with the last syllable accented, but I might be missing something.
Announcement
The Spring issue (Vol 97, No 2) of The Lyric Magazine, “the oldest magazine in North America devoted to traditional poetry”, arrived in the mail. It contains my poem, “Chutes and Ladders”. I am grateful to the editor, Jean Mellichamp Milliken, for selecting it.
Wounded King Herman was on his deathbed. His sons were killed fighting the warlord Zutom who was overthrowing the independent city-states. His wife died with the birth of Charlotte who was by his side. General Kim was also there. The plan was set and ready. King Herman asked his daughter if she would lead in his place and finish what they started–now. She said, “Yes.” Minutes later, and without ceremony, nineteen-year-old Charlotte became Queen of a debilitated city-state under siege by Zutom whose walls would fall within the month.
Word quietly spread of the King’s death because Zutom’s men were listening for sound and reported the increasing smell of decaying flesh. Inside General Kim gathered the inhabitants around the ruins of the chapel each knowing their accepted tasks. Queen Charlotte stepped up to the platform and placed her hand on the remains of the altar and whispered: “This ends today!” She approached General Kim who bowed, “It is our honor to serve you, our Queen. We will not fail you.” Queen Charlotte whispered in reply, “And I will not fail any of you.”
Queen Charlotte took her lead in the tunnels, the ancient, forgotten tunnels, unknown to Zutom’s spies, built a century ago for defense and escape and recently reopened. General Kim arranged the surrender of the city-state to Zutom. Twenty among the many volunteers of men, women and youth were previously selected by King Herman to accompany General Kim unarmed onto the field of surrender. Zutom didn’t think so many were still alive. To celebrate his victory he would show the world his power in case anyone were foolish enough in the future to rebel against him. On Zutom’s command, General Kim was bound while the others were executed.
“Take me to your King’s stinking body and then you will be permitted to join him.” General Kim led Zutom and his close defenders through the open gate of the city to the chamber where King Herman’s body lay. As Zutom prepared to decapitate the body, General Kim thought, “It worked!” They got Zutom inside the city on their terms. He had one final task. He pushed his foot on the floor panel setting off the explosion destroying the chamber. This triggered the gate of the city to shut. Archers emerged from hidden recesses. When they removed the threat of Zutom’s men trapped inside, they brought Zutom’s body above the city wall directly over the gate hanging it in the presence of Zutom’s forces. As Zutom’s body swayed, hundreds of archers in unison rose with their attention held on the field. They waited.
General Kim, with those inside the city, did not fail their Queen.
At the sight of Zutom’s body hanging above the center of the gate, his conscripted forces fled. Queen Charlotte signalled for the firing of the explosions in the tunnels concentrated under Zutom’s core forces, the only ones they did not want to escape and regroup. Fires blocked their retreat. Guerrilla attacks and confusion pushed them onto the field within range of the archers.
Years after the coming Unification, and then the Federation, and through the Renaissance and up to the present time, children grew healthy, strong, proudly recalling to their children how Queen Charlotte did not fail them either.
Linked to Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt — The Tunnel — #writephoto
Photo provided by Sue Vincent for this prompt.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or people is unintended.
Any blessing we receive
May it pass on from us to you.
Every blessing should conceive
A future blessing if it’s true.
So with passing may we leave
You hope to manifest what’s new.
Forgive what we did not get right.
Arise. Be blessed with holy light.
Linked to dVerse Poetics where Paul Scribbles is hosting with the prompt “blessings”.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 