A SIMPLE LESSON ON THE BURIED SPIRIT

This morning, Whistle, I overheard a man say on what could only be some kind of an audition, if you ask me do I believe in a power, yes, but it’s not some old guy with his hand on the joystick and if you want to call that god, sure. The woman he was talking to nodded and said nothing and one day, Whistle, we will ask you what you believe, but this is a dirty trick because really all any of us has to believe in is what we’ve been taught. On a hilltop in Galilee a red heifer is guarded around the clock and her burnt-orange coat every day is parsed with a fine-toothed comb while several pairs of sanctified eyes scour the plains, the hills and valleys of her body searching for what they hope desperately never to find. Among my peers, there are parents who believe that the new generation, the one we’re giving birth to, will arrive specially equipped to save us and Whistle, I sympathize, but this seems the dirtiest trick. We’ve lost the eyes of god, so don’t look now but we’re looking at you. I used to read mention of the poem in a poem as a self-aggrandizing gesture, but now I feel it as an admission of guilt. Every butterfly in this conservatory I escape to was raised by hand to die on the altar of our enjoyment or each lived a charmed and protected life in these hallowed halls, a perfect melting pot, an ideal microcosm under a protective dome as on the moon or Mars or wherever we may one day soon be heading. Today I stopped reading, Whistle, but I lingered to look at a picture of a full-grown Siberian tiger, three hundred and seventy-five pounds, bowing its head and placing the enormous pink palm of its paw to the tiny pink palm of a toddler pressed to a pane of zoo glass. Innocence to innocence, a benediction, forgiveness, a warning? It bowed its head and pressed its paw and rubbed its cheek against the glass in front of the little girl’s face before turning away, an animal in some places believed to be son of the same mother as man, in some places worshipped as a god, an animal smart enough to hunt us not for meat but for vengeance, Whistle, if given the chance.