by Peter L. Atkinson
for Matthew
The cicadae, an ancient tribe, are said to have been the first men taught to sing. In rapture they forgot to eat and later did not notice they had died. It was their song that moved the grasses bending to the dance that raged on the courtyard tile where that woman drove her heels, drew up her hem and shook her skirt to its ragged ends-those tassels, a terror to living men.
So too did violent rhythms shake my mother as she pushed me into the world-useless, helpless. And neither was I tossed away nor left to die, but preserved within a cloud of incomprehensibility, let to nurse amongst men, amphibians and cattle-and how well-walked is that track though the hills in whose saddle a pond full of frogs blink at the sky.
We returned to the city long after dark. Matthew and I slept in the car.
In the gardens of Pedro El Cruel a child’s boat still drifts unmanned: blue are the mirrored waters where oranges fall into their own reflections.
*Photo courtesy karthikc.