Patterner

In the trees a child reaches toward the sky; wind gusts, and he becomes a dog, eye winking sun, tail rasping in time with leaf-rustle.

In the dark by the bed, moonlight fingers trail jail bars on the wall, create hobgoblins from two books and a piled shirt, lend menace to dark corners shifting into poignancy as we see the scattered mundanities that were so briefly ensouled.

Eyes and mouths are everywhere, caught in folds of cloth, chinks in stone, only indifferently in flesh; yawning and smiling and staring with expressions of lunacy shading to love, fierceness to fear.

We wander in a world crowded with momentary demons and deities, totems, spirits of beloved ancestors watching from the mossy well. There it is! See it? The cougar leaping through the wood burl flickers and becomes a striking serpent, then dissolves into a whirlpool bearing a wooden boat from long ago.

We pause, we smile or frown for a moment, we move on. The dancing child, the boat, the dreams and nightmares walk with us, invisible. Behind us, the mute tree and the blank stone remain.