August 15: Fifteen Albums, Midst of Life, Michael David Madonick, "Stork," Confessions of Saint Marty

One of the kids would say that Robert had showed up in generally good spirits around a quarter after four, a little late, and that they joked about the prospect of getting hired to record the theme song to a cartoon show about outer-space hounds from Japan in the new year, work that Ives had gotten them through a connection; that he walked in with a Sam Goody's shopping bag as well as another bag filled with different items, mainly paperback books.  Dressed too lightly for the cool day, he had worn a long black-hooded raincoat and a cap that he didn't like because it messed up his fine dark hair, brown penny loafers and galoshes, a Cardinal Spellman High School senior ring.  During the break he sat around with a couple of his friends in the choir room, showing them the 33rpm records he had bought as Christmas presents that afternoon, about fifteen albums in all.

Those are the details of Robert Ives' final afternoon of life.  Christmas is approaching.  He's a senior in high school.  Loaded down with presents, Robert has plans.  Practicing with the church choir.  Entering the seminary.  Recording a theme song for a TV show.  Robert is surrounded by the promise of the future, as most 17-year-old high school seniors are.  In an hour or so, he will be dead.

I think we're all a little like Robert.  When I get up in the morning, I think about breakfast and work and school.  As I go through the day, I read poems, write a blog post, sometimes clean a bathroom.  In the evening, I'm already thinking about the following day.  The future is always on my mind, and that future does not include death.

Yet, as the Book of Common Prayer says, "in the midst of life, we are in death."  A year ago, I'm sure, my sister was not thinking of death.  She was thinking about dinner and watching The Big Bang Theory.  Sure, she had a broken wrist and back pain, but she still was thinking of a future.  A long future.

My sister is doing well at home.  For the most part, she's peaceful, without pain.  For the first time in a while, she's munching on ice chips.  Opening her eyes every once in a while.  Around her, life is going on as normal.  My dad is sleeping through reruns of Gunsmoke.  My nephews and nieces are playing video games.  My son is having tantrums over bathing.  There's laughter and arguments.  Life.

Today is hot.  It's supposed to reach over 90 degrees.  My brother is taking my son on a fishing trip.  I'm planning on going for a run this afternoon.  A short one.  I'm also playing the pipe organ for the afternoon Mass.  And then we will order pizza like we always do on Saturday nights.  And my sister will be in the midst of all of this.

I'm still not convinced that bringing my sister to my parents' house was the best decision in the world.  However, at the moment, the prospect of my sister going gentle into that good night is not imminent.  She is surrounded by family and friends.  People who love her.  That is a good thing.

Saint Marty is not raging against the dying of the light.  Yet.

Stork
          for my father, Carl, who died October 5th, 1998
          and for his great-granddaughter, Anna, born October 5th, 1998

by:  Michael David Madonick

What bird brings grief?  The crow, the raven, some multitude of starlings
rapturing their madness in an oak?  Or is it that simple bird, a sing sparrow

chilled and pouting up against the dawn?  I wonder, when they passed

through the darkness, toward their different light, how my father might
have talked with her, holding her hand, a hand already formed at some

perfect age, at ten or twelve, and his, at thirty or thereabout.  In our time,

it wasn't long, five hours, maybe six.  But time enough, I think, for a walk
along the boardwalk near Rockaway, for something to eat, time for my

father to tell his great-granddaughter how he never liked walking

on sand, particularly on hot days, such as this, but that she should try it,
not keep back from the waves where they both could see some ghostly

sooty gulls trace their wings across the phosphorescence of breaking

sea.  And Anna, with her perfect mouth, might thank my father
for the chocolate milkshake she had no idea she loved.  He would

have spoiled her like that, in that short time, but not without warning,

not without the undertow, the jellyfish, the lost hooks that even there
good fishermen lose to things beyond their dreams.  He'd have warned her

until he left, disappeared from Ft. Lauderdale, in the chimney smoke

of the crematorium's Monday afternoon, where like a painting, a painting
assembling itself against the unframed canvas of sky, a large bird would

form, tall and strong, no flimsy phoenix, he wouldn't have that, not even

in dream, he'd make a more useful bird, something of his smoke, that
could carry the practical, the precious, across the confusing distance

of the in-between.  It could carry six pounds, almost seven, and when

it landed nearly breathless in Vermont, against my daughter's breast,
she'd be happy, scared and warned.  Such is that early crying, that distance

from the beach.  Such is that bird that did my father's work.  It is made

of grief.  In a year or maybe twelve, I'll bring her chocolate by some
beach, she'll look at me, and me at her, as if at something both of us

repeat.

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 14: Complete Sadness, Sulky Daughter, Michael David Madonick, "The Asp," Spoiled Fairy Tale, Adventures of Stickman

They had gotten there about a quarter to five, and she had to be home at seven.  But when she checked the time again it was twenty to the hour.  That's when Kirk brought out a paper bag and filled it with the contents of a thirty-cent tube of DuPont model glue.  Burying his nose in the opening, he suddenly flew back as if someone had smacked him in the head with a two-by-four, laughing wildly.  Then he gave her [Ives' daughter, Caroline] a whiff and she found herself circling overhead, her thoughts whipping along, propelled by the chemicals, the feeling of strangeness multiplying when he clicked off the light and lit a candle, and then brought her out of that dark blue and black atmosphere into reality.  She opened her eyes and realized that he had his hand up her skirt and that the crawling sensations inside her were caused by the clumsy groping of several of his fingers, and while one part of her seemed interested and flattered and excited, another part of her disliked every last bit of what was happening.  And she would remember how, at about seven fifteen or so, as she had stood up and pulled down her skirt and looked for the light, a sensation of utter and complete sadness abruptly rushed into her, lingering there and then suddenly vanishing.

As the father of a teenage daughter, I find that passage about Ives' daughter, Caroline, difficult to read.  Caroline is testing the waters of freedom.  Without her mother or father's permission, she goes to the apartment of a couple of boys she barely knows.  The boys are older, carry an air of sophistication and danger.  Of course, they're simply teenage males, guided by hormones and stupidity.  Caroline huffs glue, blacks out, gets groped.  And then, at the exact moment her brother dies on a city sidewalk, Caroline is consumed by an inexplicable darkness.  Basically, in a single paragraph, Oscar Hijuelos describes the biggest nightmares of all fathers of teenage girls.  Drugs.  Strange, horny boys.  Sex.

My daughter reads my blog to see what I write about her.  She thinks that I depict her as a sulky, fourteen-year-old girl.  Quicksilver in moods.  Embarrassed by the fact that I breathe next to her.  Stubborn and angry at any suggestion that she clean her room or spend more time with her six-year-old brother.  Tortured by anything that she deems childish or unworthy of her matured sensibilities.

I think her assessment of my descriptions of her is a little unfair.  Sure, I have applied the adjective "sulky" to her on occasion.  Overall, however, I focus on her kindness, intelligence, beauty, and grace.  She has been my pal since the first night she came home from the hospital and peed in my mouth in the middle of the night as I was changing her diaper.  I like to think we share a special bond.  When my wife and I were separated for a year, I volunteered in her kindergarten classroom, braided her hair into long ropes, took her to dance class, and held her at night when she cried in bed for her mother.  She was my girl, my companion in the war zone of my life.

Of course, I know my daughter has to figure out who she is.  She has secrets now, does things that would probably give me nightmares if I knew about them.  She resents having to be an altar server at church.  Every Saturday, around 4 p.m. when it's time to leave for Mass, she flies into a rage.  (I don't think she's possessed, but I haven't ruled out contacting an exorcist.)  Even getting her to go to a private dance lesson, which she used to love, is a Shakespearean tragedy.

I love my daughter.  I miss the closeness we used to share.  That's what I want to say tonight.  She's still beautiful, intelligent, graceful, and kind.  However, right now, I feel like I'm just the owner of the laptop she wants to use.

Once upon a time, a kind king named Oliver had a daughter named Gretel who was his pride and joy.  King Oliver gave Princess Gretel everything she wanted.  He never said "no" to her.  Gretel wanted a diamond bed, Oliver gave her a diamond bed.  Gretel wanted a sailboat made out of chocolate, Oliver gave her a sailboat made out of chocolate.

King Oliver and Princess Gretel were very happy for a very long time.  Then, Gretel turned fourteen.  Suddenly, Oliver could do nothing right.  Gretel wanted a pony, and Oliver gave her a pony.  "But I wanted a brown pony, not a stupid white pony!" Gretel cried.  Gretel wanted to go on a vacation, Oliver arranged a vacation.  "But I wanted to travel by horse carriage, not by a stupid boat!" Gretel whined.  She wanted to have a party for her friends, Oliver threw a party for her friends.  "But I wanted everything to be draped in pink, not stupid green!" Gretel wailed.

One day, Princess Gretel said to her father, "Daddy, could you please build me a new castle?"

King Oliver had had enough.  "No, my dear, I will not, because I will build the wrong kind of castle.  It will be the wrong color or be made of the wrong bricks or be surrounded by the wrong kind of moat.  I cannot satisfy you.  Ever.  You are a spoiled, thankless child."

Princess Gretel started to weep, and King Oliver built her a new castle made out of onyx.  When she saw the castle, Gretel fumed, "I wanted a castle made out of jade, not stupid onyx!"

Moral of the story:  King Oliver was a friggin' moron.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

The Asp
          for Maria

by:  Michael David Madonick

My daughter is fixing her face again, the Saturday
night ritual that takes a thousand pencils
to draw arcs above her eyes, all part of her generation's
markings, along with the new tattoo,
the one I've barely seen, that scrolls along the lower
region of her back, seen when she's
deigned to pet the dog, a fleur-de-lis, toward
provinces I'd rather not think about,
or the flippant gestures of tinted hair, the over-done
dime store glitter, the precarious
mole.  She has not yet succumbed to the piercing
of body parts, the eye-brow, the
tongue, the spike through the cheek, at least I have
not seen them, but I am not so naive
as not to suspect more sensitive areas may already
be skewered.  What can I say?
I'm only her stepfather.  She walks over me like
Cleopatra over one of her bolted
rowers.  But I see something, even through the planks,
through the varied masks of her
labored deceptions.  The odd alignment of her eyes,
the bright wonder that since
she was four could light a room or two, a small city
perhaps, stars.  Beauty.
I'm never sure about that.  But here, in the den, shackled
to the remote, I'll shift stations idly
and look at the way the odd glow maneuvers about
the room, catching in the scalloped
fish-net curtains, or on a silver frame in which a tarpon
nearly comes to life again, or
that fluted celadon porcelain bowl, the whole time
waiting for her to come down
the stairs, to yell at her, the inevitable, at the too-
short skirt, the four-dollar
three-inch heels, the halter top, all the silly accoutrements
that make a man distracted
from the issue.  Simply, and she will not hear it,
some people are compasses
and others row.  She'll storm from the house, and
her mother, who guides some
larger ship, will side with patience, the wind, while I,
gripping the gunwales
of my chair, will sit and later drift the better part of night,
till then, when I hear her
footsteps on the deck, her hand on the door, and I'll snap
at her again for breaking
curfew, for slamming the door, for stomping up
the stairs, for everything
and anything that at that moment comes to mind and
heart.  But never, never do I yell
at her for all that rowing, that damned rowing I do, circles
in a straw basket when she's gone.

Adventures of STICKMAN

August 13: Michael David Madonick, "Iris," King Kong, Terrible Darkness, Adventures of Stickman

Iris

by:  Michael David Madonick

About the lip
there is an edge.  More
to the point, an edginess,
not so nervous as to be
construed as shy, but an
inclination, nevertheless,
toward the ascetic.  The clam
belly's undulant scallop, or
Jessica Lange that instant before
Kong came raging
through the wood.  Tied up
in beauty and in rope, it never
wants to give what it seems
to show.  And he, however
soft his hairy hand, is bound
by her music, to fall
asleep, then
dead.

Yes, I'm changing things up a little bit.  I wanted to start with Mike Madonick's poem, simply because it sort of captures the kind of day I've had.  The poem is about being on the edge.  The trees of the jungle trembling, hiding the giant ape about to burst through.  The lip of the flower hiding something pink and beautiful.  Or deadly.

Tonight, I went to the funeral home to make some preliminary arrangements for my sister's funeral.  It wasn't half as difficult as I anticipated.  The two sisters who accompanied me actually stuck to the plan we decided upon last night.  There wasn't bickering, raised voices, or name calling.  It took about 45 minutes.

Back at my parents' house, our parish priest came.  Father Larry brought a stole used by Frederic Baraga, first bishop of Marquette, who died in 1868.  Bishop Baraga is on the road to sainthood.  Currently, he has been given the title "Venerable," which is the first step toward canonization.

Father Larry wrapped Bishop Baraga's stole around my sister's head and chest.  We prayed over her.  Every person in the room (12 in all) laid hands on her.  Then Father Larry anointed her with chrism.  Finally, we recited a rosary. When I looked over at my dad, he was weeping.  It broke my heart to see him.

It was strange to go from planning my sister's funeral to praying for her recovery.  Like in Mike Madonick's poem, I feel like something's approaching.  Something huge.  But I can't see it in the trees.  It might be a miracle--my sister sitting up in her bed and saying that she's hungry.  Or it might be death--a phone ringing in the middle of the night in a dark room.

Ives and Annie experience something similar the night that their son dies:

As they happily walked to the subway, they were looking forward to spending a lot of time together at home during the holiday, in the company of family and friends.  Ives and Annie had stopped to peer into a window display of French linen when, just like that, a terrible darkness entered them, and they could not move and stood looking at one another stupidly, on the crowded and busy sidewalk.

Ives and Annie have no idea what the darkness means.  One minute, they're doing a little Christmas window shopping.  The next, they're filled with inexplicable dread.  Something big is approaching, and the trees are shaking.

Saint Marty is praying for a miracle, but he's preparing for something darker.  Heavier. 
King Kong-sized.

Adventures of STICKMAN

August 12 Photograph, Memory, Michael David Madonick, "Because the Deer Have Come to Rest," Adventures of Stickman

Nothing monumental transpired.  Niceties were exchanged.  Polite conversation.  What could be said?  Gomez's continuing struggles were evident in the expression and manner, in the very setting.  He did show Ives the shelf filled with the books that Ives had sent him years ago and spoke appreciatively of what he had done.  He was proud of his education and hard work, but what with times being difficult, money was hard to come by.  He sometimes looked down at the floor.  As for Ives, he left a parting gift for Daniel Gomez to open later, a photograph of his son, Robert, at seventeen.

Danny Gomez is the man who, as a teenager, murdered Ives' son, Robert.  Over the years, while Gomez was in prison, Ives sent him letters and books and presents.  At the end of the novel, Ives agrees to meet Gomez, as a gesture of healing.  Forgiveness.  At the end of the meeting, Ives gives Gomez that picture of Robert, young and full of promise.  I don't think Ives is trying to be cruel.  Quite the opposite.  Ives is entrusting to Danny his most precious possession:  the memory of his beloved son.

Tonight, I sat down with my siblings to discuss the details of my sister's funeral.  It wasn't an easy meeting.  Each person had very specific ideas of how our sister's life should be celebrated.  One sister, adamant:  "She does NOT want to be buried."  Another sister, just as adamant:  "I want a TRADITIONAL Catholic prayer on the back of her Mass card."  A third sister, triply adamant:  "I DON'T want that song at the Mass."  It was like arranging a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine.  Several times, the talks broke down, but, in the end, we hammered out a deal.  And tomorrow evening, I will go to the funeral home to make the arrangements.

I understand why emotions were running so high.  We all want our particular memories to be honored.  I have memories of my sister singing in the church choir.  That's why I'm being so stubborn about picking out the hymns and music.  That was something I shared with my sister.  Something that sort of binds us together in my mind.

Memory is a tricky thing.  Mike Madonick captures its slippery nature in the poem below.  Memory, he writes, "will not hold."  It morphs over time.  Mellows.  Becomes fuzzy around the edges.  In a few years, maybe my recollection of the meeting I had tonight with my sisters will change.  Perhaps, thinking back, I'll remember it with laughter.  One of my sisters mentioned a company that turns a loved one's cremains into a sculpture.  My response:  "That's a little creepy.  Well, I'm just gonna dust off Sally now."

Tonight, however, Saint Marty feels like he's been through a hostage negotiation, with everybody trying to save their particular memories.

Because the Deer Have Come to Rest

by:  Michael David Madonick

The big snow stayed on the ground and rabbits,
for two weeks, tore at the trees, a high watermark,

that years from now we'll point at, say to someone
who cannot help but listen, a grandchild maybe, a

new neighbor, See here, that was the storm of '99,
the snow stayed for almost a month and the rabbits

ate the bark.  I'll forget the wind and maybe the three
starlings that fell asleep on the edge of the chimney

and came down the furnace like pubescent dreamers
into the heat.  I'll probably forget the fact the house

got so cold the windows and the door frames arched
with ice and that the dog, though not old enough to

fairly complain, balked at her morning walks.  I'll
forget the deadly fear of watching my son, when

the snow started to melt, stand straight under a three-
foot icicle that formed from the roof drain and he took

like some drunk sword-swallower the drops of water
that looked completely benign.  I'll forget a lot about

the snow because that is what the snow does, it's
a damper, a tarp, the cheesecloth over the headstone.

But when it all started to melt, when the weird weather
came, in its fog and thunder, and lightning behind it, when

the dog went pulling on her chain from the door because
a rabbit stood stunned on our green front lawn:  I'll remember

my wife, who has seen everything, who knows the names
of wildflowers and the odd colors of light that disperse

like magic or pain through sleepless stained glass--I'll
remember my wife standing at our kitchen window looking out

into the field whose white-caps of snow were giving
to green.  I'll remember her, her mouth wide open, like

some child at a circus seeing more than she could take in,
I'll remember asking her what she saw and that she said,

The deer are lying down, I've never seen that before.  I'll
remember that and that the worst of the snow, and the

starlings, and the dog, and my son under the icicle came
on the day my father was born and it was three months

since he died.  I'll remember that there are things that
happen dead in the woods and that only in strange

weather will be given to sight.

It will all go bad.  I know that.  My memory will not hold, the rabbits
will get slow, my dog will be carried away, and my son will only
remember the ice that falls, the dangers that have come upon him.
But I will know, deeply as the wounded trees--marks are made on a
life, and mine, in '99, because the deer had come to rest.

Adventures of STICKMAN

August 11: Grace and Personailty, Whitewash, Michael David Madonick, "Box Turtle," Adventures of Stickman

Ives did not pursue it then, but would find out later that Carmen, a figure of grace and personality, who was pure dulceria, would have one and then another and then a third debilitating operation, not upon her heart, as Ives had first thought, but upon her breasts and the surrounding lymph nodes.

Carmen Ramirez is an important character in Mr. Ives' Christmas.  She is the wife of Ives' best friend, and, throughout the novel, she remains a figure of supreme patience and understanding and love.  Devoted to her sometimes abusive husband.  Dedicated to her children.  At the end of her life, Carmen is elevated even more, becoming almost saint-like in her suffering and love.

My sister was transported home today.  The hospital bed was supposed to be delivered this afternoon, and the ambulance with my sister arrived about 4:30 p.m.  And now the long process of letting go begins.

I have difficulty when death sort of whitewashes a person's life.  It's natural for family and friends to overlook a loved one's faults and mistakes during the mourning process.  Death is painful, just as life is painful.  I love my sister, but she was not a perfect person.  We had some major disagreements over the years.  Times when we barely spoke to each other.  At points in our relationship, I broke her heart, and she broke mine.  That is the truth.

Yet, we never gave up on each other, even during those difficult times.  I loved her, and I hope she knew that I loved her.  Neither of us were saints.  We simply did the best we could.

Even though I work in the medical field, I intensely dislike hospitals and doctors.  My sister understood this fact about me.  I didn't visit her as much as I should have over the course of her illness.  I used every excuse I could.  Work.  Teaching.  Kids' school programs.  Dance recitals and competitions.  I was a shithead, frozen by my own fears and phobias.  I did the best I could, and now I know it wasn't good enough.  I can't whitewash that.

At this moment, I feel like the box turtle in Mike Madonick's poem below.  Carried into the heavens and then released.  The rocks are going to be hard and painful.

Just call me Marty tonight.  I am no saint.

Box Turtle

by:  Michael David Madonick

It may be that I've got the whole story wrong,
but I've heard that eagles in Argentina have learned,
after the rain forests were burned back, to
catch box turtles that survived the fires by
hiding deep in their rooms, and carry them
to rocky outcroppings, a hundred feet up, and
drop them like bad cartoons until their helmets
crack.  I suppose one should give credit where
credit is due, to the birds that never did such
things before the burning, or to the farmers themselves
who decided to set the trees down so their cattle could
graze more easily.  But I'm more likely to think
about the turtles, to whom altitude is as foreign as
speed, pulled aloft by the claws of some sharp-beaked
angel, its house entire raised like Dorothy's in the
tornado, or the deep heat of a fever, or the deus ex
machina of sporadic holocaust that God has cast us
to.  And then, when the wrench of feathers decides
it is right, RELEASE, an unbungeed free-fall, a
reckless unbraked downhill dive toward the inevitable,
the Diaspora of soup, the shell gone weak against
the stone.  Then, if there is anything left in listening for,
to wait, one might hear the angel come in for
its food.  The oratorious stall of feather that makes a backwash
of air so it can land delicately by the mess, the Humpty
Dumpty that the turtle has now become.  I suppose
one needs to give credit where credit is due--God,
Belief, no less apparent now than ever before.

Adventures of STICKMAN

August 10: Dodo Bird, "Ives" Dip, Michael David Madonick, "Platypus," Adventures of Stickman

My first day back at work was a welcome distraction.  For most of the day, I was able to focus on something besides the oncoming storm in my life.  I had no choice.  There were phones to answer.  Patients to register.  Chocolate to eat.

I've always thought of myself as ill-equipped to deal with crises.  I don't like change, especially change over which I have no control.  I survive, but I'm sort of like a stegosaurus stuck in tar.  I thrash around, trying to escape, and then sort of give in and sink to the bottom.  Become a fossil.

This past weekend, a friend told me that I deal well with change.  "You adapt," she said.  Her statement surprised me.  I'm the guy that sits home on Saturday nights and watches The Lawrence Welk Show on PBS.  I reread books.  Rewatch movies.  In the past two weeks, I have watched the same documentary about writer David McCullough five times.  I find this kind of repetition comforting because I know what's coming.

"Adapt" is not a verb I'd apply to myself.  When drastic and unwelcome change occurs, I scramble around, trying to find a new routine.  It may take a few days or weeks, but, eventually, I will find a new rut for myself.  I haven't gone the way of the passenger pigeon yet.  But, if I were an endangered species, I probably wouldn't survive because I'd keep returning to my wetlands until they were turned into a parking structure.  And then I'd surrender to extinction.  I'm a dodo bird, not a platypus.

My friend sees something in me that I certainly don't see.

My sister has not been transported home from downstate yet.  She will be coming tomorrow by ambulance.  The hospital bed will be delivered to my parents' house in the morning.  Right now, I feel this uneasy sense of anticipation among my family members who are here.  They aren't quite sure what to expect.  A meteor is approaching.  A new Ice Age.  The topography of their world is about to change drastically.

My job this week will be to prepare.  I plan to contact the local funeral parlor tomorrow to set up an appointment.  I've already talked to a musician friend about music for my sister's funeral Mass.  These are things that need to be done.  And I don't think any other person in my family is thinking clearly enough to do them.

My question for Ives tonight is this:

Am I a platypus or a dodo?

And the answer: 

One of the pamphlets was called The Sweet Summons.  Its cover depicted clouds that were bursting with light, a chorus of gospel singers standing before them--"The Good Light of Eternity" awaiting all, the "sweet summons" that came at the end of life.

I find that answer strangely comforting tonight.  Sweet.  Quiet.  Peaceful.

Maybe Saint Marty will survive the coming apocalypse.

NOTE:  The Poet of the Week is Mike Madonick, who read at the university last year.  I chose him because his poems make me smile.

Platypus

by:  Michael David Madonick

Elegance breeds extinction, or
quite the opposite.  Take the Persian
gazelle, if you will.  All leg and
leap and pirouette, the poor bastard
is as old as the pyramids, its
brains crowded out by its horns.  But
the broadfoot, the duckbill, the
soft woolly thing gone wrong in Tasmania,
uses everything it's got.  The size
twelve shoe it calls a nose is as sensitive
as the crazed Vladimir Horowitz's
imperfect pinkie playing Scarlatti in candlelight
at Carnegie Hall, some tight-stitched
prayer rug under the bench to prevent the
passion from slipping.  The rug-maker
himself, having mastered the masterful math-
ematical deigns, impregnated, for
better or worse, a gesture or real piety, the
mistake he offered to Allah that now
is being pressed like a question by the sharp
thin leg of the piano bench--Horowitz
unconscious in his reverie and trill.  But not
to forget the platypus, who uses
his spatula head, a non-kosher adaptation,
stirring the silt for insects, worms, the
detestable shellfish.  And when it swims, dives, it is
its own invention, adroit, simple, making
all its inchoate parts the envy of the ridiculous
otter.  This is not, after all, the panda, whose
cuteness has brought him to the brink.  It is a Scrabble
word of a name--platypus, implying just what
it is, a kind of canker in evolution, an oddness that
never quite inherits the whole.  Make no mistake,
anything can be anything, but this, just on the short
side of grotesque, attracts as much attention
as it needs and then retreats.  Finally, whose prayer
is perfect anyway?  Yet the platypus is full
of incongruity and pain; it lies in wait, some Ninja
in the backwater, the only mammal
with the horny spur behind its leg, venomous--
so they say.

Adventures of STICKMAN