937. THE GOOD MORNING OF THE BIG-LIPPED FISH

THE GOOD MORNING OF
THE BIG-LIPPED FISH
With everything all together, the man had
his hand in a fishlock, something like holding

onto a cat by the Simpson. The new-found
day was just crawling around the mission-post,
and the fat fellow with the cleaver was wielding
it close. 'On the first day of creation,' he was
thinking to himself, 'was it they made the water
or the sky?' He was damned if he could remember.
-
It sometimes seems it's always like that, a
mixed-up confusion, a Chevrolet when a
Cadillac was needed, or what you wanted
anyway. I remember the day I was too drunk
to drive. It was Memorial Day, about ten
years back. This girl drove my Lincoln home
for me, while I had to wobbly-walk. It was only
about a mile, I grant, but what the heck. She
was perturbed. When I finally arrived, there was
the car - but up on the curb. Just goes to show....
-
Seems there's an intention in Nature that's never
been met, or at least not yet. Leaves that whistle
in the wind, or make a rustling sound that you
can hear all through the night. A moonlight
that settles in eddies and coves. The dash of
the barn swallows, this way and that. In much
the same way, it was never my notion, intentionally
or not, to finish this life up with any semblance
of any good sense. But then, the intentions
in Nature are never that dense.
-
Danse macabre? Dance of Death?
Morbid jig-reel, square-dance met?
I went, just last week, to a fortune-teller's
wedding. In acknowledging my presence,
she said - 'In your future I'm willing to bet,
and I hope you're ready. I see death and
darkness and sadness; I see everything
except a beheading.' Needless to say,
that was some kind of wedding.