LIKE SOMETHING ELSE
There is within me
an orange
ball. I hold it with two hands
as it expands, a bright
lung it
pulses softly, feeling
orange.
I sense a vague evangelism
in you and realize that
I must explain
lest you take this thing to be a senseless
orphan. You are pretending
to be a house.
Wrapping comfortably around
me but you do not
comprehend the way that things
contain each other.
It waits, I explain, to unite
simple elements, in sudden
flashes, making the green
boughs crowd greenly in the corner
of the frame, so quickly that
you really did just
imagine it. You are
looking at my explanation
like a very new painting.
“You have an orange,” you say.
Sometimes it can be
that way, yes. Like fruit.
But, ah, you have grasped that it might be
like something else and,
temporarily, it is safe.
Something moves within
you then; you flashing after it.
But,
“I am 84 Kortright Road West,”
you can say.
“There are six plates
in the cupboard.”
And it sees a round landscape, bristling velvet.
It wonders who is coming for dinner.
You watch it, bouncing thoughtfully, and you think that
you could bounce.
I see repossession creep back
into your eyes—I know that
I must act quickly and the irony is
you could bounce.
A simple brown wind lifts your curtains,
rattling the shutters and
tracking blue through the halls.
Noticing the sun, a
brilliant creature
lifting itself into the sky,
I point, saying
“Something like that.”
#bright #elements #evangelism #orphan #Poetry #TomJohnston #twoHands