A man in a coma spoke this, to the shock of the nurse who was in the room with him at the time:
On the stony brooks of the Potomac,
Saying what can’t be said
Doesn’t mean you said anything.
But there you stand,
As water cascades around you
You feel like more,
But you remain, only a man.
And then he awoke:
Many days later, this man was in the neighborhood of his childhood. He walked along the streets and went in a backyard that was dark in the night. Even in the shadow of moonlight, by a tree he looked up and saw a tree fort encased in darkness. He stood and listened to the wind creak the wood of the trees and this wooden tree house. Several minutes later, police arrived at the house. They asked him what he was doing there. He responded, “Rehabilitating squirrels.”
In the cell that night, he imagined a squirrel in the cell with him in the moonlight. The squirrel was writing with spray paint on the wall, “Park Ruler.” The squirrel disappeared as fast as he appeared in the cell and he was left to think and dream:
As in Dune, “the sleeper has awoken,”,
but I will not awaken as the Messiah,
one above generations.
I will awaken as a dream,
who can do nothing without the dreamer.
Many days later, it was morning, and he found himself in a wheat field. He heard the wind rustling in the stalks. He began to dream. He was in a meadow of grass. All the squirrels ran to him like he was Snow White. He began to sing, and all the squirrels followed him as he walked about the meadow.
He began to sing a song, almost subconsciously, like he had when he was in a coma. It was a space between dream and reality:
The White Lion fell in the ground
with the thunderclouds
and rose up with the lightning shower.
He will return in power with a shout
When all the lights go out, go out.
As he came back to reality, he said and laughed,
“A squirrel can’t give birth to a lion.”
He came to walking through a thick forest at around dusk. The gnarled branches bent and sounded like they were ready to snap in the swift breeze. He came upon one tree that seemed to open up before him like wings. He saw shadow movement at the base of the tree that seemed to scurry around and up the trunk in spirals and his eyes moved toward the top of the tree and remained fixed:
The trees this twilight
were flooded with moth-like birds
that moved like bats.
The fluttering betwixt the moss hives
high in the amber
was enough to drive you to tears.
Why do the trees stand still?
He found himself with an open newspaper in his hands that seemed to be from a small town. The main article had a headline that said, “The Gloved Waver.” And the article read “There was a woman with white gloves driving through town and waving at people out her open driver side window. Who is this gloved waver?” And the smaller article below had a headline that read, “Do we have a squirrel whisperer in our midst?”
He had a distant memory of being a boy on a field trip to a tavern that found itself in the middle of the Revolutionary War. He remembers the tour guide telling a story of one patron who, when a musket ball struck the staircase next to him, ran all the way to the neighboring town without stopping. He pondered this and thought:
War is an outcry for creativity.
The action and fervency of war
is an expression of a desire
for “pure creativity”. Muskets and
cannonballs fired may as well
be fireworks in the sky.
So much destruction comes
from the desire to create
He found himself driving a car with his arm out the front window like the gloved waver. He had no glove on, but the squirrels on either side of him along the small town road were following his car and there were children running after his car shouting, “It’s him, it’s him!”
He thought about getting ice cream on an evening of crickets in a small town. He remembered how secure he felt as a man in that moment and no desire to be more. He thought of this connection and reached out:
A Fillerless Rope,
To deliver a sword
He sent a lamb,
When he could have
Just as easily
Set it across
The horns of a ram
He arrived at a street in this small town. There were trees on either side of him, in this suburban sprawl. The trees hung low and he found, as he walked, acorns began falling from the trees at his feet. He almost slipped a few times, but gathered himself. The sun peeked out from behind the trees and he had a daydream:
The white helicopter seeds
Flutter all around.
The summer trees are
Snowing. To the right
A tree draped in brown,
Its hair catching sunflakes.
They are at your feet,
God’s Royalty
He found himself in a bright room with lots of people. He looked behind him and saw a brick fireplace and he noticed he was wearing a flannel shirt. When he lifted his arm in a chicken wing-type motion, a squirrel jumped on his arm and remained, fanning its tail as he looked at the crowd. He smiled and cameras went off as the crowd cheered.
He coughed and really woke up this time. He looked at the nurse and smiled. The nurse left the room shouting for the doctor and other nurses. They called his family. When his wife and child, that he had not met yet, arrived, he looked in their eyes crying and with joy he remembered his name and realized he was no longer a stranger.
