Talespinning

THE BIKER 
Word Count: 305

He pulled out behind me and I saw him in the rear view mirror. An older guy, handlebar mustache, black sleeveless shirt, golden arms holding steady on a Harley hog. I was doing 55 in a 50, but I knew he would have liked to hit the wind a little faster, a little cooler on this sunny hot Sunday morning. I slowed a bit and pulled over just a tad to let him go by in the only passing zone on the twisty river road. He roared by, but not too fast. He must be a local, knowing the church and a 30 mph zone was just ahead.

But we rode together for a little while and I got to know him better. A heavy-beaded string of rosary beads hung backwards on his neck. The crucifix squarely centered on his back. A Harley dude, I think, and yet for a week or two, I had a 350 of my own once. And rode it 30 ft. before I dumped it like Artie Johnson’s trike. Now I’m a Honda CRV. A middle-ager’s car despite the standard equipment table and ice bucket in the back that was supposed to sell it to consumers as a party car. I click to roll the window down, a middle-ager’s version of freedom and the wind in my hair.

He made a lefthand turn into the church lot. I went on by; for me, not God but groceries are my routine. I think of my own faith, jaded and worn around the edges. A thin strand that ties me back to childhood and unquestioning belief. I think of the biker, zooming into Sunday mass and trusting God so strongly that he didn’t wear a helmet. That’s faith, I guess. That’s honest faith. And suddenly I have to laugh.

THE PLANE  
Word Count: 419

I saw a two-inch plane today; most of those that cut across my sky are quarter-inchers. And because I know he won’t believe me, because he laughs, I reach up and pluck it from the sky and put it in the little wooden box from Poland where I keep my special things. I had to fold the wings to fit it in.

There was once a time when we would share the world, each offering made as a gift wrapped up in sparkling tinsel wound within the ribbon bow. I gave him a rose that bloomed into a red Ferrari. He drove us to the moon where we ate cheese and sipped wine and danced beneath the stars. He left it in a crater for another visit someday. He gave me a crystal snowflake in the middle of a storm. It took him forever to find it, he said. He strung it on a strand of gold as fine as hair for me to wear around my neck. We followed an ant to Japan and strolled the streets all day. We bought kimonos, his was royal purple and mine was fuchsia with a golden serpent embroidered on the sleeve. We left them swirled together in a pudding on the floor beside the bamboo mat when we made love.

Sometimes I think I will show him something I have found because I have forgotten that his vision has clouded over. Sometimes I think I will, and then I don’t because it seems it makes him worry. Even angry. I don’t know why. I have this hope that if I find the right thing to show him, share the perfect gift, I can reach beyond the stress of his career, the immersion of mind into a pool of numbers, angles, and make him happy again.

Today seemed right. After dinner I thought I heard him humming. I went upstairs and got the wooden box and brought it to him. As I opened the box, I told him about the two-inch plane and took it out. He told me I was silly and got up and went into his office and closed the door.

I looked at the little airplane in my hand. Carefully, I unfolded each wing. I held it up as if it were flying free. It caught the light on its shiny silver side, sparkled in the evening sun. People were smiling and waving from the tiny windows. I got inside and headed to the moon.

YELLOW SKY
Word Count: 163

I stood beneath a yellow sky, the silhouettes of branches leafed into the canvas swiped with color. I flew within the feathered swirls, felt the brush of birches as I sailed.

Only in my mind.

Reality insists you see it as it is. Yellow grows to green, paints the leaves and fades to blue. Blue is my reality.

How many times do we pass beneath the sun, feel its warm fingers on our shoulders, never looking up to doublecheck it is indeed, the sun, and not some electric heat imposter? When is faith belief and when is it fact we take for granted?

Fifty years times three hundred-something days times hours, minutes; how did it all pass by without my notice? Which instant made it all familiar and stored away as knowledge never needing confirmation; which second flashed from glorious discovery into same old news.

I stand within a yellow sky that crackles with insistence and I know I must look up.

OF LOVE AND TIME
Word Count: 340

It suddenly was just there, a baby Japanese red maple fighting for space in the tangle of wild blueberries and weeds in the hedgerow. I fell to my knees, fingering the delicate leaves fine as lace.

The young man who lives with me is both memory and dream. He weaves past into present with his fingers, stirring up years that have flowed by in the oblivion of my youth. There is honesty in the rings of his eye. The beauty he believes he is seeking he finds in the soft mounds of my breasts, the unfettered welcome of my arms and thighs as they surround him.

It was a year after I had been abandoned. When the man I had lived with and loved for so long felt he had to move on. And my young man was suddenly just there. Broken from love too demanding, as young love will be. We, both alone at our tables with coffee and book, looked up now and then, me shyly, he more bold and questioning. The next time, we sat down together. We talked of books, and flavored whipped coffees, then of love.

There were no expectations but honesty. No promises but those of respect. It was freedom as neither of us had known before. We honored each other and that, in its own way, is love.

I’ve taken a shovel and carefully, carefully moved the small sapling to a welcoming place. I watered and fertilized and staked against buffeting winds. To nurture. To offer it hope. Safe from its past, secure in its future. I know it will thrive.

My young man will leave me. Soon, I expect, and I will sigh with both relief and yearning. He has blended time into a blanket that will keep me warm and content. For memories brought back into life and dreams made real are back within the reach of my mind now.

And he, his heart tended, mended and carefully held, will grow strong and sure in a new place, where he belongs.

EQUALITY
Word Count: 334

Just watched the hummingbird dance his crescent of display for a female sitting politely in the bush. He doesn’t know she’s on the pill. I wink at her and she winks back. A note of understanding.

There is a rhythm that goes beyond the hummingbird’s measured flight, that seems to cut into the air like a knife circling a watermelon on a hot summer picnic table. Finally he breaks his dance and flies off to the trees at the edge of the yard. She, relieved, comes to the feeder but hum and whoosh! and he’s back on her like a magnet. I sympathize, but she knows as well as I that this is life. That’s it and you learn to work around it.

I’ve got to start thinking about making dinner. That, too, is part of life. It’s getting harder; lately he’s been complaining about chicken. After twenty years he suddenly is not too hot on chicken. I sneak it in when I can because I’m tired of balancing beef, pork, pasta and fish–and the fish has been on his “not crazy about” list for the past six years and pasta is so high in carbohydrates.

While he changes, I adjust. Women, I think, always adjust, despite any feminist thinking on either part. It is acknowledgement of equality versus the need to be mothered and cared for. Particularly when he is working and I am not. Or at least, not getting paid much for some of it, nothing at all for all the rest. And to be fair, it isn’t him. I don’t need someone else to hint at guilt. I’ve learned it better on my own a long, long time ago.

And there are good things that he does that counterbalance this relationship. Like killing spiders and the occasional mouse. He also bought a he-man’s mower. And because I hate the noise, he snow-blows the driveway before he goes to work at five a.m.

Still, I wish he would dance.

MEASURES
Word Count: 212

There is nothing that goes by me unnoticed. It’s the details, the pinpricks that can be seen by the blind, the footprints of the ants that have gone about their daily work, that’s where life fully resides. Where it is given its complete attention and care.

One time, when I was young and open to all that was new, all that had grown to become new before it fell into history, I was in love. Stones cracked into sand in my fingers. Drops of rain became rivers that laughed on their way to the oceans. Trees blossomed and stretched to the sky, wiping off blue into smudged clouds. The sun shone from the center of a child’s eye, the moon in the opaque eye of the elderly.

Then I lost love and its undiscerning gaze. Now I am at odds with nature, the air strangles me. The world full of flowers has shrunk to its petals and then, one single petal in particular. It is too large a world to cope with unless once dissects it, seeks the point of focus, microscopes it into a simple cell.

So I tread carefully, my step light and considered. Each day passes that way, with one petal fading into another. One footprint, of an ant.