Brandon has had several digital incarnations since I first started reading him, among them being One Child Left Behind. I grow dependent on favorite writers so I was dismayed and disoriented when he suddenly pulled the plug on his blog. It's a terrible thing to do to your readers. It's like going out one starry midnight to revel in the beauty and joy of the heavens and seeing that, since the night before, one of your favorite constellations has vanished ... poof! ... It's NOT RIGHT!!! Several fine writers who make up my cosmos have done that and I HATE IT!!! You know who you are.
We who are left behind to lament the emptiness have one consolation. Blogging is addicting and happily very hard to kick so I was delighted, but not entirely surprised, to see that eventually Brandon resurfaced at The Blog Formerly Known as One Child Left Behind, from which he ventures out to do guest posts.
As the muses would have it, today Brandon is my guest here at this lonely outpost along the language barrier. I am honored. Here is the piece he wrote exclusively for this world that does not yet exist. Thanks Brandon and happy Independence Day!
oh oh oh
I like fishing next to this mountain alder, 'cause he chose a pretty view over a hale and hearty existence, disregarded the hidden costs of prime real estate, and even now the bottom leaves are yellowed in the cherry of spring, the roots bared by rising waters, doing his best salty mangrove. He's like an old refugee, managed to elbow his way to the front of the breadline, only to be knocked down by the crowd, watch the sacks of grain go by overhead, rise with fists.
This shore is littered with the trunks of trees that peeked too far over the edge, peaked too soon after a few years, piqued the interest of too many birds now nipping at the buds that sprout too far into the lake. The uppermost branches, once home to tanagers and flickers now occupy basement apartments for sand shrimp and mosquito hawks. I like this stupid old tree, the choice he made, give him a playful shove with my shoulder, like when we were kids, and we'd play along the highway and we all knew someone would push another kid out into traffic, the throughway, thoroughfare, arteries, et cetera, but no one would ever get hurt. A car might blare a horn and a boy would get a taste of the kind of mortality this alder's got no interest in. Don't push the trees, I think.
I don't begrudge this tree his real estate, nor do I fear his short time. I fret over confinement, my need to perch atop a hill and see the remnants of friends from faraway, to bear the harsh weather, to crack beneath the growing sun, to battle the erosion of the dirt between my toes, to stretch my arms throughout my space and offer my hands to the shrikes, the wee hawks confined to their sparrow bodies, that they might rend lizards upon my thorns, long after the barbed wire fences have rusted away.
When I find my spot, the seed I will plant will be a hawthorn, crooked and pale, with a vista over all the space I cannot seem to live without. I think I could stack 1,000 of those days on top of me and I wouldn't notice the added weight, how lightly I flow through the atmosphere, and oh. oh. I can remember learning to float on my back in those moments, winning the equilibrium that keeps naught but your lips above the crest of water, so close to breaking its bonds with your skin, flowing into your mouth. The sun was so hot in those days. Your toes would dip just below the thermal layer, feel the cold retained by the milfoil, force you to suck in a bit more air and rise. And rise. And rise.
You would hardly miss a thing, and have all of 700 years not to do so.
- Brandon
