Brazen Predictions

The driver swerves to miss the ball in the street, and hears the chirp of her tires. In her relief, after her adrenaline subsides, she thinks of an island and a lover in her past. Her resolution is broken.

Intending to put fifty cents into the jukebox, he deposits instead a quarter and a token pressed at the museum by his son. For a moment it is lost, but the machine gives it back. He holds it hard.

The captain chooses a different harbor, anchoring at dusk, and finds a pair of skimmers flitting gossamer-light, their beaks slitting thread-thin grooves in the glassy surface, and he relaxes his watchkeeping.

The baker, frowning at his counter, wields his frosting bag and doesn't like what he hears in the TV debate. He considers the infinite mix of every present moment, every action and reaction; the future unknowable by any axiom, any axiom at all,

and the moments of the past placed in compartments, pinned like butterflies and beasts by phylum and family, so as to be held in enough minds for enough time that those who do the talking can say categorically how it all went and what it all meant, as if by saying these things they knew, and knew what to do.

~~~~~~~~~~

Douglas Logan

Comments

[ellwort]

Aw, man. Nice. Makes me think of that old Irish poet:

That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand upon his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.

That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding resides
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

- WB Yeats, "Long-Legged Fly

[Emilie]

I really love this one. The first stanza stands out for me.

Em