This Ancient Thread; Strand 4, Part 1, Draft #1

Tactile rainbows night of new feelings
symptoms of social order-system shock
too hard to ignore too soft to grasp
white knuckled in late evening's failing light.

Evening was our oyster, Juggling Suns
jamming square pegs in our circular holes:
at least that's how it felt, heads compressed,
our little brains crushed too full to cracking with laughter, big thoughts,
levitation and smooth anticipation driven nails: music
that drifts to eardrum and plays like harpstrings gently tugged
melody pure.


The World Turtle led the way:
beak pointed north, the universe at her beck and call.
Thus she led us into day turned gray then night,
but not lies led on high
brownies prepped the week before in a kitchen off campus,
enjoying our destinies as if fate itself could be contained in this uncontrollable world.

The World Turtle led the way, dark splotched in the rarefied starlight,
and us her disciples, followed as dogs wag tongues and drip saliva,
evaporating but slowly in the humid State College air.

This Ancient Thread; Strand 3, Draft #2

There were always a lot of cats on the farm,
to the extent that we even had irrational fears of some of the mothers,
like Black Mama;
her a dark mottled calico,
suckling her litter out of the way
in one of the pig sties,
lookout posted in case she might come around the corner.

Another mama had one tell-tale eye glazed over,
pussy green
and one leg curled up useless by her side;
mangled and uncared for fur tan colored rooted with burs.
And she, in spite of her hard-road ways,
reliability had kittens two or three times a year.
Some one thought she was sexy. Someone thought she was too good to resist.

In fact, most of our kittens survived barely long enough to remember,
and far too short for names.

I remember kittens crushed under the right rear wheel of our shit brown Suburban;
kittens stalked and eaten by wild animals, left to rot as hollow shells of ribs, headless,
empty of innards;
kittens shocked fried stuck stinking
caught up in the electrical underbelly
of the freezer that stood on our porch;
but the death I remember most deserves a short story all its own.

To keep kittens off the front porch,
my dad built a wooden plank across the top step.
This was done in response to the electrocution incident
and because cats were always getting hit by one of the two doors on the porch.

One day a friend of my brother must have been in a hurry leaving our house.
He rounded the corner, as our porch was enclosed by an age-old stone wall,
and stepped right through the wooden plank, kicking it far ajar.
The wooden plank, now dislodged, scraped stone,
but could not hide the sound of kitten crushed
and killed probably faster than it ever knew what hit it.

This Ancient Thread; Strand 1, Draft #2

This memory could be of any day, so let us say _____.
Clammy hands, quiet looks at girls,
my ass on cracked plastic, lower half of a warped wooden desk.
Shifting in my seat I slide my back down then up
awkward in my cramped chair.

Shorts too short, the price you pay for homemade looks,
shorts too short, Daisy Dukes, says a friend.
Bad enough that here I am, young man spinning clay
into forms bestial and ugly, one of only three guys
in a class run by a middle-aged hippie in new-aged rags.
The price of adolescents, attempting to stand out by not standing out.

My stomach turns over and I feel the pale pink puke
splashing my throat like magma spattering the rim of a caldera,
Accompanied by the fear of being called out,
being singled out as someone other than them.
Daisy Dukes, they would say over and over, not all at once, but still
from time to time, Daisy Dukes-Daisy Dukes-Daisy Dukes.
The General Lee was parked out front at my high school,
so how was I supposed to feel?

We grow out of this, so some say, we grow older,
but memory yet keeps the past alive
as embers snug in cow dung,
carried from camp to camp.

This Ancient Thread; Strand 1, Draft #1

A sample of austere efficiency,
copper brown but mixed with black.
Memory of any day, so let us say _____.
Clammy hands, quiet looks at girls,
In need of something, of what? Of what was I certain?

Shorts too short, the price you pay for homemade looks,
shorts too short, Daisy Dukes, says a friend.
Bad enough that here I am, young man spinning clay
into forms bestial and ugly to look upon.
The price of adolescents, the eternal search for cool.

Black is a pit in my stomach, a constant ache
or fear of being called out, being singled out as someone other than them.
Daisy Dukes, they say over and over, not all at once, but still
from time to time, Daisy Dukes-Daisy Dukes-Daisy Dukes.

We grow out of this, so some say,
we grow older but memory
imperfect though it may be,
keeps thoughts and feelings alive
as embers snug in cow dung.

This Ancient Thread; Prologue, Draft #2

I bend to look at a thread I see before me;
it runs ahead too far for me to see,
and the beginning of it runs far off behind me,
a dot in the endless distance.
This thread is worn but not too well worn,
copper brown after the long passage of time.
And as if peering downward through a microscope
I see that it frays into a thousand smaller more intimate strands,
some thin but well-worn, burs whose itch tell the tale;
others robust and strong, full and smooth to the touch, unused but nevertheless ready for their task;
some long, pulled thinner still but clinging with what little might pull;
some stained with blood, stained-changed color to dark red, brown-blood from iron wrought from tears and toils;
some colored the color of love of life of the sun; pale gold and silver glittering reflections of starlight.
One thread is a thousand. A thousand threads is one.

This Ancient Thread; Prologue, Draft #1

I pull on this ancient thread
copper brown with the slow passage of time,
and it frays into a thousand smaller more intimate strands:
some thin but well-worn, burs that itch but help tell the tale;
others robust and strong, full and smooth to the touch, unused but nevertheless ready for their task;
some long, pulled thinner still but clinging with what little might pull;
some stained with blood, stained-changed color to dark red, brown-blood from iron wrought from tears and toils;
some colored the color of love of life of the sun; pale gold and silver glittering reflections of starlight.
One thread is a thousand. A thousand threads is one.