Keyholes

I looked through the hole made of skylight and metal and I saw the biggest rainbow ever. There was rust on the metal fringe, just a hint of white cloud, and that impression of rainbow somehow all together like a picture framed on the wall of the world. There is hope in every view, it seemed to say. Look again. If you linger at the edges, then study the edges. Find every crevice, every dark crumple, every scrunched up wrapper, and imagine what left it there, think of its journey from being made to this moment. (This doesn’t have to take long.) Just as every leaf has a life, a genealogy, every scrap of metal, every dot of dye, every broken steering wheel, every crank case, every abandoned tire, has a story. It doesn’t so much matter what they are, to everyone, just that they have one.

I used to hide in abandoned tires, when I was small enough, and even when I got big enough to think that I could never fit. Fitting into a tire and imagining rolling down an endless hill seemed perfectly logical to me since sometimes I felt like everything was rolling inside my head like inside a dryer. This sounds very strange, I know, but why so strange if you can so easily imagine a donut hole, a spin cycle, a wheel with shiny silver hubcap spinning so fast it’s a blur. This is the strength and speed of a thought.

I was once spraying paint on a wall, with the screaming wind behind me. That was before I knew what I know now about wind. Wind has carried every vowel, syllable, word through time. Wind has formed, with its partners of water, fire, and earth, the tunnels and plains and mountains, even the shorelines we explorers and travelers follow, the same way we lovers follow the curves of a body, and look into the tunnels of eyes, kiss the strands of eyelashes as though they are the most precious hair in the world. I heard howling in my sleep, when I awoke beside the train tracks, when I stood on the high platform and closed my eyes, bowed my head, feeling the vibration of the steel and wheels, the memory of all motion hurtling through time into now, feet planted like a great oak.

That moment on the platform was a comic book block, bright colors and cape and smoke swirling; high wooden platform rattling like a roller coaster and clattering like a cacophony of wooden spoons and bookcases falling over while outside a storm rages.

This brought every other moment of softness, even potential gentle raindrops, into giant relief. I imagined the fields of golden flowers I had once read about, tulips that shone into a horizon like just opening, overlapping hands. I opened my mouth for the raindrops and tasted the salt of ocean spray and the neck of a beautiful woman as she lay beside me in the twilight. Then the cascading of leaves that touched me as I walked under them with a man who bent to kiss me with a smile full of satisfaction and humor that could not be held back. I felt the caress of human life being stroked into being, bringing me the globe of the world and a belly rising like sunrise.

Violence has no place in such a world. Nature’s way of change, the teeth of creatures horror-like to us in miniature, has its writhing and tearing and searing. We are to be thinkers, lovers of the way flesh is made, the way flesh moves because its insides and contours are beautiful simply by nature of their design and being. What we add and do to them may camouflage and damage, but think what the polish and shine of love inside can do – the way green works because it is alive. Pain and blood come with birth, and some changes, red light/green light.

Kiss us goodnight, touch our hair, stroke the forehead which has a fever and glistens. Tuck us in. Love us into being, and we will glow for you, we will show you why the sun shines.