Something New Under the Sun
It would have to shine. And burn. And be a sign of something infinite and turn things and people nearby into their wilder selves and be dangerous to the ordinary nature of signs and glow like a tiny hole in space to which a god presses his eye and stares. Or her eye. Some divine impossible stretch of the imagination where you and I are one. It would have to be something Martin Buber would say and, seeing it, point and rejoice. It could be the mouth of a Coca-Cola bottle or two snakes rolling down a mountain trail. It would have to leap up out of the darkness of a theater and sing the high silky operatic note of someone in love. And run naked slender fingers through the hair of a stranger, or your mother or father, or grandfather, or a grassy hill in West Virginia. It would live on berries and moss like a deer and roam the woods at night like the secret life of the woods at night and when the sun rises you could see it and think it is yours and that would be enough and it would come to you as these words have come to me--slowly, tenderly, tangibly. Shy and meanderingly.
From Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer by Steve Scafidi. Copyright © 2001 by Steve Scafidi. Reproduced with permission of Louisiana State University Press. All rights reserved.