I confess: I bit him. Not two weeks on the job, I risked room and board and bit him. Not the honcho who had me fill soup cans with worms, not the bearded boss I’d bed. No. I bit the teen I had harnessed and all tied in. He wouldn’t back off a 100-foot drop. “I got 200-feet of safety line coiled here like a snake.” He was clutching my brake arm. So, I bit him – canines to wrist. You bet he let go. Rappelled down in record time. No harm done. He flashed my teeth marks at dinner. So I’m told. I was on duty in the dish room, sorting hot silver, singing: “a bag of bones is a bag of bones.” Who could hear my wheeze over the steam? They don’t take you down to a doc in town if all you have is bronchitis. “Water in the lungs – flatland can cure that later.” But, if you’re fluid in, say, your sexual preference, they’ll arrange electroshock. Pronto. Just ask the unicyclist pianist. That’s why I didn’t steal. All I wanted was a prune dish. A leftover saucer from the dude ranch this once was. Bone china with antlers: a little kanji brushwork -- two leaping deer. I didn’t want full set. Just a little saucer for stones to put on my bunk shelf. The dishes were stacked unlocked in an old outhouse half the size of a confessional. So, I asked, “Can I have a little prune dish?” “No. But, no one would notice if you took one.” Right. All god’s angels would. I was working to pay back god’s messenger who saved me from a life of offertory. Cursing me for reading infidels, a Hell’s Angel turned preacher twisted my wrist, made me enlist in seminary. God sent, an angel with a ponytail who redirected me mid-recruitment to this rocky path. Belayer I was on a ledge hidden from view while an itinerant preacher rappelled half way down a cliff, gave a dangling sermon. If you followed his extended metaphor then I was God. Little old me with my belay device shaped like infinity. At any moment I could have let him slip. Seeing as I’m not God and certainly not the God beyond the God of worms, I couldn’t see the ground; it’d be tricky saving him at the last minute with a well-timed yank. Besides, if I lacked the courage to steal a prune dish, how I would I ever risk killing a man over a sloppy metaphor? Spirit made flesh. The trick is keeping friction just right for a safe descent rope wrapped around metal. Body counter-balancing body. It’s all about a grace-filled exit, I guess. What I don’t get is why frayed ropes - or ones known to have cushioned a fall - are “retired,” meaning relegated to manmade structures. If a rope is unsafe for rock, why would it hold me and my bucket of linseed oil as I resurface the roof of an alpine chalet? Does it matter if faith is the same old rope that’s broken everyone’s fall? I’ve discovered it is not my body asking such questions. My body weighs a situation literally by shifting weight. Roof or rock – it is all matter, all a matter of balance. Still. I’ll let any of god’s angels ease my involuntary breathing. That’s why I fell for hymns. Long refrain. Grace notes. Dependable coda. Robes the color of Buddhist garb. No hand holds, no tricky grip just the breath coming up from the gut. I’d pay my week’s 20 bucks for such accompaniment. This one cello showed up in the canyon below the climb Open Book. You’d never want to feel a belay line that taut – the grief of dead weight resonating from a hollow. The lowest cello string so tight my vocal chord quivered. My neck lengthened like when I reaching left with my head turned right open-mouthed for maximum extension. If I ever got a little bowl for rocks, I’d treat each stone like whole note - a drone held over to the next measure. The traverse across time more a faith than up or down. Word all vowel all howl. |