Spine Of The Stream

 Spine Of The Stream

I saw a one armed man count his sorrows on one hand and it wasn't his dominant one.
Try not to wave to the one-armed motorcycle rider.

Blessings came early on, not even four minutes after leaving the residence.
Then again, how a blessing is deciphered or realized comes upon that tool of measuring that is the human perceive-r.

This blessing was merely approached as a quick glance that caused curiosity.
A blessing is a tattered pair of blue jeans squashed up against a stream stone near a creek that eventually, 13 miles eventually, inlets into the lake.

Wandering eyes hook into and bring back scenes of misplacement.
Noticing crows that don't fly away but merely step beyond the white highway line and highway walkers that may enjoy, immensely, every given step or possibly loathe and cuss at the motion of every vehicle that speeds by, it is the new and wandering sights that congratulate arising from out of blandness.

How did the pants get there?
Is there a bare-bottomed stream victim wandering around someplace?

From a quick motion, you pass by quickly in that blur and there is wonder.
Walking, with snail-grace, the opportunity to investigate takes it's fortune.


I walked, on and on and on.
It was delightful at first, upon the dirt roads with a breath of youth.. Feeling as a character of straw-hat wandering emerging out of a book and into the life not with pages but with wilder beasts yowling through the hilltops at night and men in gym shorts holding hoses watering their AstroTurf passing through the 'quiet towns'. There are even places you could scream as loud as you will and only creatures not of your own ilk would listen, or scatter.

Later came the highway. As the smell of pines vanished the scents of molten beer carcass lamb discourse bellied into an aroma that urged a blending with each car whooshing by at a violent interval.
I came upon the sight of a pair of jeans in a stream, which I knew eventually leads towards the lake.. The direction I inevitably walk one torn shoe at a time.
It was strange how close this crow allowed me to approach before it did as natural and flew off in respect to it's own safety measurement.

Dropping down the bank I knew I'd be emptying the pebbles out from either sneaker once I continued back on trail of the garbage-heap highway route, permitted I don't just walk the rest of the stream down taking a more musing, 7 mile, adventurous path.

Taking the shoes off anyhow, pant legs rolled up, I waded towards that pair of jeans... Funny how nobody else may have noticed them, they must not have been there that long
(Actually, very few had eyes which strayed from the lines and you were the only one on foot, thus willing and with enough time to further something that would be nothing, garbage, to most anybody else.)

I wonder how somebody would lose a pair of pants within the stream.
They washed down, I bet.. and, is there some bare-bottomed wander wondering just....
well, I'm down here already anyhow.. and it's been hours of walking those roadsides.

Splashing face with this stream water, then lifting..

A coiled snake HISSES then leaps, if you could use that action regarding a snake, off towards the opposite bank.. A snake from from under those jeans, down the spine of the stream and gone.
Fuck. Okay, okay.

There's a wallet, there's a belt, there is money.


I once was a human, I once had skin, well, of flesh.
It was a strange thing, becoming reshaped.
I still do have skin, but now I can breath through it like every scale is like a doorway.
The multitude of vision appears as I am armless, legless, interpreting each sound as vibration and every color as a weight to be measured and known by movement.

Somebody had pulled the cloth from my stillness.
What, do I say, reason of communication is astonishing in it's limit.
I jump, the opposite way, looking up.
My wallet, form of identity, is in the hands.. For days, days, being here.


We stop the car.. from residence to the lake shore, here we are for an entire day.
See the willow trees like African haircuts sweeping as a weather vain, roots as the vein, winds as the indicator. These trees have age and this lake has lips. They say "o!"
The line between crows and seagulls separate in the possibilities of tourism.
If there's the possibility of tourists then crows just don't want to be there. I can understand that, in a way.
That's where the seagulls come forth.
The seagulls can be pretty goofy but I like them anyhow.. With their freckles or dalmatian spots. The crows tend to reside in places where their echoes will sweep just as well as where the willows will grow near the shore.

I sit down with the sun hanging from the roof, nearby the shore.
I see an item near the waves, outward, caught on a tree branch further up shore along the lake-lip..
It is fuzzy blue, soft looking.
I get up and start walking towards it...
A scattered t-shirt, when I get to it, is what I discover.


Depending on your hunger, your response of action, etc, etc, justifications are dealt with in several ways.
If it were money floating down the stream in singularity, it would be mine for the keeping.
What we have here is a situation that could have been me. What we have here is a situation that could involved injury, amnesia, trouble, somebody in a screwed situation etc, etc.
I decide to further walk down the stream... Leaving the jeans, carrying the wallet with identity and cash, maybe I will find more further walking down.


I wish not to be SQUASHED!
I've been well able,well enough at least, to learn how to steer this newer body. Part of me knows I'll be SQUISHED or run from if I am made out...
This one, this person, what are the odds of this, a person coming through this way from the highway and then continuing to walk further down the creek?
First came the terror, confusion, being turned into... This!
Then came the oddity of a shrew being slowly and horrifically gulleted down my gullet.
After the nightmarish congestion of this situation there was the boredom of the whole damn thing.
Counts of time, kept as something of another planet entirely, and all of the slithering..
But now, I don't know how, If I follow this person...
And what happened to the others?