Declaim the Disclaimer

On Sunday I took Skylar to another birthday party, this time at the park up the street from our house. It was a great fête, culminating in a collectively undertaken quest complete with a homemade treasure map. Naturally, the Bean liked that part best. For my part, the thrill consisted of accompanying many young children into the park's "danger zone" on a day when reptiles were likely to be catching some of their first rays of the season. At least we were adequately warned:

That's my favorite sign around here. It reminds me that I'm living in the sort of place I used to watch PBS specials about as a child.

At one point, I was so preoccupied with keeping the birthday boy from sprinting ahead that I forgot the first rule of desert safety: watch where you're putting your feet. "Hey, look at that snake!" cried out one of the six-year-olds. I turned to peer into the bush, then realized that the snake was about an inch from my backless Land's End mocs. I panicked for about a tenth of a second until I confirmed that it was, in fact, a gopher snake. Still, that initial glance at the horizontal bars on its tail made me want to compose this cautionary tale.

Blur

The poem won't come.
I stare at my canvas, a real
Lily Briscoe. That pattern,
this pause: I can picture it
all. Not at once, surely,
but always with a sense
of the whole, each bit beginning
a colorless blur in the corner
of my eye, like a threat you
feel more than see. It's not
worth making real.