April 11, 2003

• cho has his day

   

  Per his Thursday custom, Mr. Cho sits on a weathered green park bench adjacent the jungle gym.  It’s the kids he thinks of daily, giggling and fighting and making up all at once as they kick their legs high in the sky.  The spiral slide is always a hit.  An assembly line of tots climbing upwards in an orderly fashion, spin-spinning down and around and around, landing in soft clay-brown sand.  It’s an industrial sized playground, plopped a couple hundred yards square in suburbia’s parkland.  Chinese elms arch overhead in clumped trios and the sound of a passing breeze carries the rusty squeak of two swings, undulating like pistons.

   

  He’s crotchety and ill-tempered, short with the stupid.  But children are a different matter.  A visit from his grandchildren leaves his neighbors befuddled; his whiny complaints and acerbic wit replaced by cartoon voices and hearty, slightly exaggerated laughter.  Oh really!  I don’t believe you!  Ha!  You’ve caught me, Pink Power Ranger!  A polished oak cane leading the way, a stooped, stubble-faced man scampers about a middle-class lawn, braided pigtails in pursuit.

   

  His wife was a catch.  Short and a little stocky but such fire and light in her eyes!  In their youth, they fancied themselves an enlightened, modern couple, cracking Kierkegaard jokes in private; funny precisely because the jokes aren’t funny.  It was self-effacing.  Over morning coffee, they talked of all things under the sun, nothing sacred.  Stubborn as heck, all their head butting was always with subtexts of levity.  They weren’t actually so serious.  Just in love, skinny-dipping in the swirling banter.  He was happiest during their habit-forming years when they’d go for walks, no more conversation than hands and their crystallized breath.

   

  When tired, he helped her with the New York Times crossword puzzles.  Slowly, the myelin sheaths of her fragile neurons unraveled and as her hands shook, he pretended not to see.  Nineteen down.  Hmm.  Ah, that’s it!  S-H-E-R-P-A.  When she slept in that tired, heaving way, every breath a sigh, he’d look at the contours of her tiny back visible through a grandma’s soft nightgown.  He would lie down, eyes roving through questions in the dark.  He was a sweet, sarcastic man.

   

  The park bench is where he claps and cheers, the almond-shaped eyes and black hair of kids calling him to look and see, harabujee.  I’m up so high!

   

  His daughter’s son tumbles from the slide chute, landing with a baby thud.  It’s those awkward three seconds when a child decides whether or not it’s worth crying.  Mr. Cho is up on his feet, bracing the side rail for balance.  And then comes a sensation of lightness.  Falling forward, his eyes are wide and his cane floats suspended before him.  His hands brace forward, flapping wildly and time resumes.  He’s flying.

   

  For all their wit, she laughed at corny gibes.  The Supreme Cheese.  My kingdom.  My kingdom for a kiss. 

   

  To his bewilderment, he falls forward only to rise up.  It’s amazing.  In seconds, he’s as high as a wind-battered kite, struggling against a surging draft.  He touches it, feels the string taut, and looks down.  There’s the playground from an entirely new angle.  From above, the swings are back-and-forth and the sight of children spiraling down amuses him.   He contorts his ascending body, seeking control.  He weaves through mirrored downtown buildings, looping under the Fourth Street Overpass.  The metro passes beneath this wrinkled Asian initiate (to Avian Society).  So, he glides, the numbing cold bracing his fingertips, whipping his hair full above his head.  And with incredible laughter, he swoops downward, bursting at the world, look and see! 

   

               ———————————

  

   

           —

   

           We Dance on a Thin Edge

   

         Hope is a dancer

         Sultry as can be

         You aren’t permitted a touch

         But you can see

         That she moves to a rhythm hidden.

   

         Her name was Truth –

         A horrible liar

         Trapped in a yellow briar

         And leaves us weeping.

   

         Blow me a kiss of all time’s sand

         I’ll soak it to spilling

         And make some plans

         For something worthwhile.

   

         Destiny is pretty

         She wears a cotton dress

         Billowing simple

         Like freckles.

   

         Faith, you are a stopple

         To a demijohn of foes

         Poured out in ladling dregs

             Of woe.

   

         Love is ever primping

         The winking girl of Troy

         But I’m ever thinking

               It’s a ploy.

   

                   Feet above head

                   Head above feet

                           And repeat.

   

       ————————-

        

   

  Good late night dinner, Thongster.  Have a great time in Colorado.  I could retire there.  Look me in the eye next time, foo’.  Swanky Yankee.

   

      –

   

  

   

   

   

   clik!  Matt11:28

   

  • 4:01 am
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