Day: August 23, 2023

supermensupermen

we dug holes in the cold dirt, scooping small caves for our small superheroes
who rested there after battles with their slightly-larger adversaries.
the dirt was sandy, packed after infrequent rains, but crumbly,
powdery, and laced dun-red with iron oxides. the caves could easily collapse.

we played there every day, marking our caves with tumbleweed twigs or with pebbles,
or with the memory of a pattern of stones in the back wall—
or for my newest cave, almost the best, by stuffing it full with my wadded-up
brilliant red superman cape, surviving item of that year’s trick-or-treat.
a corner of the cape i left poking through an air-hole in the roof of the fragile superhero’s hide-out. my best friend, digging his cave beside mine,
said it was about time i finally took that stupid cape off.

the next day my cape was gone, my cave destroyed. my best friend’s cave
had been badly damaged. it looked as though godzilla had passed rampaging through.
the authorities took our report, but said there was really nothing they could do.
we felt the feelings of betrayal one will feel when fantasy battles with reality
and reality wins. a few minutes later we went to play ball.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

flycatcherflycatcher

this morning, pre-sunrise, down the paved bike trail along the river,
by the sewage treatment plant, i pumped in seventh gear through a stretch
populated with countless gnats in hovering clouds. it was still too dark
to see them well, but they peppered my arms and face, ticked against
my biking helmet as i rode through their domain, my head down, eyes squinting
to keep them out, mouth barely open and my breathing shallow to keep them
out of my throat or god forbid my lungs.

a flycatcher i passed sprung from its fencepost perch and fluttered along the trail
in front of me, swimming through the air in a meander confounding to any euclidean,
the flycatcher snatching gnats from the air, breakfast served the old-fashioned way.

flycatcher, be there again tomorrow morning, in the dawn.
i shall be there also, inshallah.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

“If there is anything that irritates sailors and makes them feel hardly used, it is being deprived of their Sabbath. Not that they would always, or indeed generally, spend it religiously, but it is their only day of rest.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast