Perhaps the point is the telling. The story of my father serves as a loop such as the rooster’s loop, or the barber’s oscillating lament: so it’s good, it’s bad, how so, that’s bad, no it’s good, how so, and onward.
The tragedy surfacing, the possibility of the boat, the possibility of a lake, the switchboard girl, the feeling of alive, the phone calls at home, the switch bitch! The father in flight, toward freedom, delivered from the libbing women, delivered from the tantrum mouse in romper, delivered from the son in absentia, the family dissolving. The flight to the lake, the future of the lake, the possibility of another story, the stroke striking, that language lost, the brain swelling, the cortisone deployed! The brain waning, the brain in repair, the head in patchwork, in stitches, a quilt—the language returns! The body eroded, the limbs will not bend will not lurch. Begin the rehabilitation! The body reforms, is removed from the family, the body will now lurch, the father delivered. Restored to the home, the family reforming, the lake disappearing, the boat unmanned, the mistress dismissed, the cortisone still coursing, the cartilage dissolving, the joints disjointed and clanging in the limbs, the limbs do not bend, the body will not lurch, return to the infirmary, the body reopens and is restitched, the limbs now in patchwork, in quilting, the metal installed, the joints reforming, the rehabilitation begins, the walk now a lurch, the lurch now a limp, the family reforming, the family in reform.
Out of the truck, the metal carapace, into the garden, the creature lurches, his frame supported with metal, toward me, toward me, toward me in my romper, my swing, my bike, a little tantrum mouse in a tree.