This is a Myth

This is a Myth

I.    Once upon a time, my brother-in-law lead his father’s funeral audience in a standing ovation for his  life, and kept them clapping for three minutes, everyone cheering a dead man until their palms were  numb. This was a myth.

 II. Today on the river

 Disorder and shrieking

 A spree of reeling, reeling-in

 A fish, a boy’s mongoloid face

 Is wrapped in glad

 Proudly stoic, unyielding

 Fish wriggles dead

 Fairies hover, caught

 Over unfairness of birth

 This, a triumphant myth

III. Up in the North Woods, land immense with calamity

  Books of fish and recipes sit alongside A History of the Region, which has forgotten about the people before the Germans and Norwegians and Flemish and French.

IV.  There is a story of a girl and her little brother walking to school in the dark of the woods when a half- bear, half-deer beast springs, tossing the boy into the air by its antlers, then turns on the girl, who rolls back and forth below a barbed wire fence while the beast hops over to gore her too. Old man on a hill run down to save them both--holds onto the antlers until his skin is scraped gone from the wrestling. Boys and girls run past the spot to this day. This is myth.

 V. Daily life at the cabin, a myth:

 Straight line, from griddle

 To the end of the dock, its screws

 Jolt into misplaced bare feet

 The motorboat, ringed with rainbows

 Of petrol-slick when it revs,

 Is named Forget

VI. After the cocktail tour

 We dock, drowsy with liquor

 At sunset, watch the slow lapping

 Of our skinny lives

 I approve this myth.

 VII.  Rains are forecast. Gather around a television. What else to alleviate shivers of refugee  hunger and  foam dripping from the lips of toddlers after Syrian barrel bombs?

 Erratic breezes blow up

 Skies turn frightening in an instant

 Cradle your mythos, for tomorrow we…