Merwoman

my hands were numb and the willow tree (which was strange because I was looking up at it laying on the hideous brown and pink and green crocheted blanket that I got from the hospice sale last fall
(which blanket does fail in its telos because it is full of holes – who invented the crochet ANYWAY)
well, I sat under that tree with the beautiful form of a proportioned woman, like a merwoman who is beautiful until her hands splay and the fingers web and your eyes follow them in confusion and awe and don’t connect that they are part of her, and then you step back and you see the whole being and the shock of connectivity almost frightens your limited and learning brain.
I’m trying to get past 1) me lying in the dark at eleven o’ clock under the smallish willow tree by the gazebo with the pond in front of me just misted with street light enough that I can see my shaking fingers.
I am writing frantically, not clearly or cleanly or well or anything, not writing to be noticed but writing because I must; it is a need and then there is a lull as I grope back in memory and I close my eyes and the water puckers and TWO GEESE LAND, noisily,
for all the world like two teenage backpackers jumping into a mountain lake, thinking they’re unobserved.

Without warning, I began to see.

The fragments of moon skittering under their wings. The intensity of wanting be here, now, was so sudden it hurt, the air was getting colder the wind not so friendly but OH!
what if instead of just an accidental witness to the miracle of wings and water, instead of sitting outside just because I need to write, what if I had intentionally sat there in on my muddy khaki rear and waited for those large birds to soar in and land right in front of me, feet from my face, their raucous calls louder in my ears than it is in dreams or in bed when I’m sleeping with the windows open!

Big bodies- HOW DO THEY FLY! why?
the wind pushes them, the parking lot lamps conflict with the inexplicable silver tinged wind-waves. They are wind-surfing, I’m sure of it!

HOW DO THEY FLY!???
DO I really not know?!
miracle miracle miracle.
now I am cold, but I have resolved to intentionally stake out the land;
if I am going to freeze, I want to freeze for a reason greater than the philosophical/emotional ranting of my 20 year old brain.