Mark. Hey.
We were only semi-literate ourselves. We meant to head for Mao, not where the Blessed Kevin miscarried us.
A rank bad place with no words at all.
It was about the year dot before my brain and the broken ice before column and Camelot, whose annals skate over our failed attempt on Mark.
When the call came, I didn't hear it to rid ourselves of the Ulster roof and cake mentality and work abroad.
So we did go in washtub Caracas and hold this show for an hour or so on a black upturned
platter of rock stained with sea lichen and scummy pools of barge flies and crap water.
No trees then. No welcoming men or women either.
But out on a Spurs end, we spotted a sham temple being a few upright poles fashioned from driftwood,
which from this straggled over to them seemed without a text or rune to vent their purpose to have their say in fish.
That's one of our symbols, said Kevin. Slowly.
The first was crude. Like Holyrood, a shock hung where the Christ might be.
The cross beam of the second wave. White and queasy was split three times by dolphins, leaps and falls,
while each of the mounting horizontals of the next carved with a rogue's dash or abandon was a fish beam.
The worst given the arc of a catfish. So closer to we saw how this was worked from a lower jaw, the bass jaw of an ox.
These three might seem the project of a class of kids, except for the cunning which had placed the group of crosses.
If we call them crosses in silhouette against the setting sun, her looks in amber or the paler moon.
The fourth was set apart. It wore the red back half of a toy tractor fixed to the neck of a pole and strapped to the spine.
A thermos meant to last the afternoon.
The can beneath. It had been plugged once with a plastic helmet that was bleached by now from orange to lime or yellow.
And over the hole was thrown. A mangled dress of fishnet and floats.
Okay. So a fifth with his second site and wasn't telling.
Only back to the boats. It's no good.
We brought the Word of God to those in hiding here, and they don't want it.
So we sounded in reply the child's note of feigned frustration, masking the relief our code forbids us to have felt or having felt express.
Tell as we sucked wicker boats and heels clear of that shingle.
He struck up from the front, bellowing out our founders lesson study the mountains.
Strange how borrowed prose would fill him full of himself.
Study of the mountains. Then when you fancy that you know the mountains, you can learn the stars.
Justin. Kevin. None of us rowing could see past the ground horizon of your neck.
And that's the school got up. You couldn't hear half that.
We aimed in reply until the double beating of salt and rain on our hands and face.
We sank back in the shape kept at the oars.
But we will expect something to sustain us soon.
Beyond the plough and the spirits. In the meantime, here's to the gay goddess as starting mother of false starts.