PREMONITIONS
The man was talking to me,
this historian, named Italo. We
were sipping cappuccino while, behind
us, the group was playing 'Tremonisha'
by Scott Joplin. He said : 'Did you know,
in ancient days a monkey could have
left Rome and skipped from tree to tree
until it reached Spain, without ever
touching Earth?' I laughed a bit and said
'No, never heard that one before.' He smiled,
almost wistfully sad, and said : 'yes, yes, it's in
my 'Baron In the Trees' but that was long ago, and
anyway I phrased it as conjecture because it can't
possibly have been. I checked once, and there may
have been perhaps a southern route.' We smiled together.
-
It goes like that in the smoke of dreams - the places
that once were, and the might-have-beens. As it were,
had I pinched my skin with a knife, yes, I would surely
have bled. It was that real - like the lilac upon the air,
or the frog-croak you know you hear. Neither of these
things can be seen but in essence are as remarkably true
as the last breath of the last human person.
-
'Take my hand, remarkable man. Hold my arm, darling
woman. Walk me through those lively trees, let me feel
this wind and air. We find the groundhogs peeking their
heads a few inches out of the ground - their holes well
burrowed beneath limb and stump. We see flocks of jagged
birds, in hundreds I'm sure, sweeping black like waves
across the sky. We marvel. We wonder. It is nothing like
this, here or anywhere, ever before. I know this much is true.'
The man was talking to me,
this historian, named Italo. We
were sipping cappuccino while, behind
us, the group was playing 'Tremonisha'
by Scott Joplin. He said : 'Did you know,
in ancient days a monkey could have
left Rome and skipped from tree to tree
until it reached Spain, without ever
touching Earth?' I laughed a bit and said
'No, never heard that one before.' He smiled,
almost wistfully sad, and said : 'yes, yes, it's in
my 'Baron In the Trees' but that was long ago, and
anyway I phrased it as conjecture because it can't
possibly have been. I checked once, and there may
have been perhaps a southern route.' We smiled together.
-
It goes like that in the smoke of dreams - the places
that once were, and the might-have-beens. As it were,
had I pinched my skin with a knife, yes, I would surely
have bled. It was that real - like the lilac upon the air,
or the frog-croak you know you hear. Neither of these
things can be seen but in essence are as remarkably true
as the last breath of the last human person.
-
'Take my hand, remarkable man. Hold my arm, darling
woman. Walk me through those lively trees, let me feel
this wind and air. We find the groundhogs peeking their
heads a few inches out of the ground - their holes well
burrowed beneath limb and stump. We see flocks of jagged
birds, in hundreds I'm sure, sweeping black like waves
across the sky. We marvel. We wonder. It is nothing like
this, here or anywhere, ever before. I know this much is true.'
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