Friday, July 24, 2015
The Meticulous Wall
Handymen
I wasn't a Linger-Some when Mark
built his wall. Not even here then.
But very shortly after I moved in, it was
informally named for me. Since I sat there
every morning it didn't rain with croissant
and coffee, cigarette and Times.
God’s in His sky and all’s right with the world!
Mark’s quarrel with the board had nothing to do
with the wall or me.
But he was transferred to Hop Scotch, a mental
facility in the chain.
Took the wall.
Well, not really, but you'd think it.
It was gone from the entrance of the
rose garden. So cleanly, no trace existed.
I first thought I had wandered to the wrong
part of the garden that chill, gray-wisp morn.
Well, sad for me, and a disappointment for
everybody.
It liked their eye.
Anyway, so meticulous. Removing each
rock, each pebble, each wedge, etc.
Mark’s something else!
“And in the moonlight!” Clara Barkin held,
though nobody knew just when. But then
she whispered “We're still looking at things
in a typically old-fashioned way.
What if he just disappeared the wall?”
She was at a party once and he passed
a tablecloth over her, and she found
herself home drinking tea, with
Clancy the cat nuzzling for crumbs
of Pepperidge Farms Milano Cookies.
“Well a magician is not a wizard.”
“This one is!”
“Well, whichever way he took back the wall,
I'd like it restored here!”
So, both of us worked on the politics of
the thing, persuading Rickey Speller to
take Mark's place at Hop Scotch, and having
him assume Rickey's place back here with the
mere neurotics.
Done deal! and I rushed to the garden and there
it...wasn’t. Oh well...gathering up my Times
I had dropped alongside a few crackers and the
styrofoam cup half filled with leftover breakfast
coffee.
You can’t make things happen with a halfass
show of ritual.
When I had done that, I kind of staggered back
and fell onto the wall!
There I thought: Did Mark do his other handymna
chores or merely wizard them? Didn’t seem fair.
Labels: disappearing, habit, internal politics, routine, times, wall, wizard
