I slept like a log that had been fresh-felled on a rock mountainside, cut through at the foot, falling and crashing through other branches, limbs hacked, draglined through mud, over rocks, to the precipice, hurled, spinning, tumbling to the icy torrents below, rolled, spiked, chained, over rapids, crashing over rock and jams, oh yes, to the lakes, to the chained raft, the towboat, the sawmill, the screaming saws, the scent of resin, the tree's lifeblood, billowing clouds of sawdust, of high flung shavings, as hot steel teeth gnaw, oh gnaw, I'm chained, dragged, hooked toward that line, the spinning toothed debarkers, listen, that saw's howling, a short while ago I was a tree, rippling green in the breeze, filled with calm mountain zen....
And now mutilated, hooked, foot first toward the screaming nemesis.
Planked?
Oh god, please no, not Ikea!
And so, I wake, sweating, the alarm trills and that hook in my ankle ceases its relentless pull. It takes a few moments, for my wakened human brain to realise I'm not a tree.
There is no mountain.
Oh my dreams this week. So much toil, so much turmoil. Dread and foreboding.
In one, though, I got to eat doughnuts. Raspberry ones, hot raspberry.
Oh Juanita? I call your name.
Rolling and tumbling? Down the road I go.
I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.
I blame the jam & cheese sandwiches you eat at suppertime.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Donovan. I'd forgot about that song. I love to sing it to myself.
ReplyDelete