The Practice

They mistook me for illumination—a revenant in walking shoes— so I gathered significance and spread text ... stood beneath the seven cardinal points with arms upraised—practical telepathy— in a white paper suit like a flag of surrender, thunder at my back ... I was an open man of the open streets—a burnished sieve of common purpose—scrawled on walls, thrashed cans and blasted caps for equivalence. I wasn’t alone—the boulevards teemed with wiggly kids and mooing parents slow as boulders. In the Plaza Palabra on a green iron bench a grand señora suffered the odes of schoolboys and thugs—smiled behind an opal fan while they searched for words to match their tumultuous nights—and all words fit ... In July—volubility—I hoarded cherries, catalogued their juices—were they Rainier, Blood Nut, Royal Ann, Squirrel Heart, Rosebud or Bing?—then swallowed them one by one like detonations ... initiations ... In a fever of taxonomy I followed a squadron of dragonflies right to the vanishing point ... Incarnation is a provisional state, but stretches outward like noon. For practice, I wallowed and stretched ...