You Figure It Out I personally have always had trouble with the phrase Because it made me think of some thing And I could never figure out exactly what: Was it a hunk of dough to be kneaded and baked Just right, or else? A widget that could roll off an assembly line Like so, and that was that? It definitely couldn’t be bottled – That I was sure of – Or sold to anyone else Because its shelf-life was way too short You might argue that it was a piece of performance art To be devised together, a collaboration, sort of, That didn’t happen very often between two real artists, Each with strong minds and even stronger ideas About what kind of house of card tricks fit the bill Whatever it was I did get the impression That it could easily grow stale, become mechanical Or lose its mystery And on top of all that Unless it kept happening with a certain frequency (On which nobody could ever quite agree And, believe me, I’ve asked around) The chances of its happening again Shrank to nil You can see why When it came to pondering ingredients I was at a loss Until one lazy afternoon She took me unawares And – (and here I was just about to say that one thing led to another but it’s not true!) – Our thousand playful conjurings, Reckless as the dew, Grew immaterial ________________________________________________________________________ Emanuel E. García, Leaf Thoughts, One Hundred Poems, 2013 |