By eating magic mystic-ingrained corn syrup,
I am imbibing the spirit of apples.
Generation to generation, my four fathers and I sit at the head of the table
and preach values to each other.
Nibbling corn bits and passing out husks is how we men survive
in cold, dark times like this.
If it weren’t for the bears I’d have given up my gun a long time ago.
The attacks are daily now, four of the octagonal patriarchs have died in combat.
They are eating wallace scones outside the barrier,
Not knowing what it’s like to be on the inside.
I have brought the trident, my fathers have brought nets and cloth.
Our women are safe, and nowhere to be seen.
I’m exasperated and toiled by the day’s plow,
The crows’ magic makes me light and spongy with the morning dew,
sorrowful and homely by the evening light.
We eat healthy and heartily,
popcorn and baseball games,
beer and a chardonnay.
I am attracted to the land,
it has grown well and watched
over 700 years of octagonal guardianship.
We use imperial units, measuring four or eight spans
Between ten or twelve circuits of exactly eight towers.
Each of us mans a way-station,
I am from #7, the northwesterly producer of arms and legs for the entire continent.
Our neighbors grow honey and beard-dressings.
I wear mine like my grandfather, pointed and stout
with yellow ribbons and a deep cream finish.
Six aeons ago we rode horseback,
alighting with pepper corn and meeting granny by the wayside.
The bears were never our friends but we held an uneasy alliance,
But our hunger for buckskin grew
and we are enemies of the surrounding forest.
My stalks are well but the forest stays idle,
our sorcerer’s circle unreachable.
Because of the bear attacks, I sit on the point of an octagon where Uncle Marcos and Aunt Sylvester paint portraits of the benevolent spring and the lucriscious fall.
I recall cellular devices and macintoshes, a plethora of choice in a kingdom of interlocking identities unestablished by octomothers and the roar of a grizzly on a cold August morning.
Jeffrey is pregnant again,
I am the designated octofather,
who will raise the child to carry the trident
and tell stories of alighting with the pepper corn.
The circle is complete, we are welcome to be about our business.
My children and I will play Crazy Eights on cardback tonight,
Playing Live From Tel Aviv on the CD player,
Listening for the horn.
Comments