C. Dale Young
The Halo
In the paintings left to us
by the Old Masters, the halo,
a smallish cloud of light, clung
to the head, carefully framed the face
of the mere mortal made divine.
Accident? The body, my body, launched
by the car’s incalculable momentum?
It ended up outside the car. I had no idea then
what it was like to lose days, to wake
and find everything had changed.
Through the glass, this body went
through the glass window, the seatbelt
snapping my neck. Not the hanged man,
not the man made divine but more human.
I remember the pins buried in my skull,
the cold metal frame surrounding my head.
All was changed. How could I not be changed?
In those days that followed, I was a locust.
I was ravenous for this life. And how
could I not be? I, I, I… I am still ravenous.
Mind Over Matter
Things repeat themselves—mirror themselves—
sometimes with only the slightest of variation, the edges
of a bloom, perhaps, tinged in rust instead of alizarin.
But the bloom remains the same. Just so, the lily
repeats itself each spring, surprising even the shrubbery
in Golden Gate Park with its shock of white, at times
milk white. I have photographs to prove this, photographs
in which the blooms each year appear in almost the same place.
It is like magic, like dark magic. No one can explain it to me.
What theorem helps us understand how the bloom
arrives again and again in similar and predictable spaces?
Once upon a time, I watched motion-capture photography
bring a flower’s previous bloom back to sit in view
of its current incarnation. Ah, the miracle of optics
and the science of the dark room. Once upon a time,
I woke to find myself cradled in a bed, the hospital room
streaked with light and shadow from the half-opened blinds.
I tried to move but could not. I saw the metallic light
reflected from the halo around my head. I saw a doctor
standing by my bedside studying me, his furrowed brow
tempered by a half-smile. As my eyes grew accustomed
to the light, this doctor faded away. I know the brain can lie,
but this was no trick. The man standing over me was me.
This man had come to assure me I would live, that I
would become the very man I did not want to become.
Cuboidals
I dream the dream of silence and prickly weeds,
same weeds they found on my shirt
as I lay in the grass, the ones that stank
of chlorophyll and excrement. Infirm bed,
tightly-fitted bed, in the bed I am laid to rest,
what better than sleep? What better than dream?
Dream the loosened sheet, the crumpled sheet.
I can move the sheet in my mind
but my body stays still. Dream of Autumn
in Florida. Dream of car spin and glass,
my body wracked by fever and the wings
suddenly breaking the skin between
my shoulder blades. Cuboidals, yes,
the small squares of muscle found there:
I know that now. Yes, the skin stretches.
Yes, the skin tears, the wings inside no longer
able to remain hidden. I am a monster,
sick monster whose wings are spewing
from his back. The blades of these shoulders
cannot clip them. They rise from my back
so quickly I am pushed up from the bed.
But the sheet, the sheet is like netting
that holds the dirty bird down, keeps it
in check. Monstrous, these wings,
longer than my entire length. The dream
starts with the sound of breaking glass,
the smell of burning rubber. Dream
of paper birds on the wall, birds tacked
into place. The wings are twitching.
I am held down, restrained like an animal.
The Hanged Man
I know a lot about the second cervical vertebra.
And because I love precision and accuracy, I refer
to it as the axis, the name buried in the Latin,
meaning chariot, meaning axle, meaning the line
around which something revolves or turns.
How is that for being exact? And to break the axis,
to fracture it, is rare. A neurosurgeon will tell you
it comprises only 15% of cervical spine injuries.
Although we live in the 21st Century and one
would assume a more clinical name for breaking
the axis, such a break is still called the Hangman’s
Fracture. I need not explain the derivation
of such a name. Not divers or thrill-seekers,
but heretics and those charged with treason
provided such a term—the hanged man, the monster,
the witch and the unloved. Go ahead; break the bone.
Shatter it. Leave the cracks to be seen on an x-ray.
The hanged man walking tilts his head to the side
opposite the cracks. He tilts his head away from
such an insult. He tries to appear normal.
But there is no name for such behavior, no clinical
name to describe this odd activity of avoidance.
I have spent years studying avoidance. I am
an expert now. I never say the hip bone is connected
to the leg bone. I say acetabulum, say head of the femur.