it’s when i have you impaled beneath me
your eyes the colors of the ocean
open and looking into mine
and i am in you
i know only what is important
and am freed from all the rest
(Published in Lyrotica, 2011; copyright 2011, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
it was the middle of the day and the sunlight was bright. the house and the apple orchard
stood at the base of a ridge dotted with scrub oaks and pines. my wife and son and i
worked in the orchard. a jenny followed by a foal wended down the ridge.
a drift of swine, sharp-tusked, followed the jenny and foal. when the swine
saw the three of us in the orchard, they charged. we scrambled up the trunks
of the apple trees and onto the thick lower branches. the swine tore at the trunks
with their tusks and circled madly below us. the jenny and foal wandered off,
down the dirt road leading away from the orchard and the house and the ridge.
in the afternoon it seemed the swine were tiring. my rifle was in the kitchen,
leaning against the wall in one corner. my son distracted the swine, throwing apples
at them while i clambered down, ran to the house, and snatched my rifle and my clip
loaded with bullets. i hurried back to the orchard and back up a tree,
where i loaded the rifle. an angry pink swine with long and pointed tusks
tore at the trunk below me. i aimed and fired, reloaded, aimed and fired again,
and again. several of the swine lay below me in the orchard, dying or dead.
the others scampered off, frightened and squealing. the three of us climbed down
from the trees. my son gathered apples in the orchard. my wife would not look at me
and walked into the kitchen. i followed her, told her, i can call someone and have those
swine taken away. she still wouldn’t look at me. she said, i didn’t tell you to do that.
please take that thing you are carrying and go away from here. i turned and walked
out of the house and down the dirt road, my rifle cradled in my arms. the sun was hot,
there was no shade on the road. the jenny and her foal were nowhere in sight.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, “1.12”, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus