Insomnia poured into a cup; no cream nor sugar added. Two slabs of bacon thinly sliced [sizzling] on the skillet [burning]. My house keeps an untidy yard for winds and rains to play in; while memory props an open window for starry nights to stray in. Pencil poised, I hold my course: and by mid morning of the seventh day I've steered my spaceship into the sun, exulting: "Oh rapture! I am done."
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for clemency]
"Come in! Come in! Supper will be served shortly."
"Good evening dinner guests." Troll bows genteelly. "Do not be alarmed. I am the affable Troll and I will be at your disposal this festive gathering. Grandmother is in the kitchen at the present - preoccupied - as our astute senses can attest by the tantalizing aromas of her trademark pastries, and assorted puddings, and pies wafting from therein; their precocious airs intermingling with homemade jams, and jellies, and pot roasts, and fresh potpourris. But keep in mind that the kitchen is off limits while grandma is cooking.
Therefore, as the oven renditions and the kettle boils a heavenly soliloquy I would share some culinary hubris to pass the hour until the bone-crackling and marrow suckling begins. Now I am not one for being fussy when it comes to matters of singular taste, [intellectual or otherwise palatably inclined], or maybe I am - come to think of it.
I have felled a fattened prairie chicken or two with an accurately launched missile in my day; or retrieved a wild hare from a wicker thorn bush with a stout pole; and was rewarded with a tasty hasenpfeffer, or garlic’d sage hen from the rebounding royalties. And trust me;" Troll winks his one good eye. "I'm no slouch at procuring and cooking festivals of salivary indulgence; for when it comes to outright gourmand-acity I rank up there with that noteworthy centenarian Falstaff himself.
But a grandma: now that is the rarest commodity. A grandmother cooks with no compeer. A simple meal becomes a cornucopia at grandma's house; and the kitchen atmosphere inflates the appetitial nares like no other. Ah neighbor: if you could only peruse my spiral bound encyclopedia of grandmother recipes, its diverse nature would astonish you to no limits.
Indeed: I do not understand why there isn't one day set aside just to honor them sweet old ladies. I love them, I confessedly do; and it brings a sappy tear to my eye each time I invite myself to an honest table and ply my fork to a grandma’s roast, or a grandma’s potted pie, or grandma's sugared yams. But do forgive me; I tend to get overdramatic at such familial gatherings as this. What say you we go now in single file and investigate how grandma’s coming along in the kitchen with that newest recipe of mine? Who knows but with so many dinner guests, it might just be she’ll yet leave ample room for dessert."
Troll removes his top hat and bows even more genteelly than before. "No, no! After you my good man," and he prods the lagging guest with a fork
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for mischief and mayhem]
All Hallows Eve night is nigh upon us. And I've got me fingers crossed, and my hopes remain high that eet will befall on one of them murky nights when trolls are free to roam covertly under cover of low altitude congestions of maidenform fog [i.e. an unsullied mist] what has arisen from the respirations of furtive spaces; whar frogs wear an aftershave penned heron's breath; and late night diners are served on green doilies atop a ripple cloth patterned of an algal sheen.
Draegonflies pirouette unaffected within the arena of an opaque moon; while beneath the polished glass a hidden pondlife teems. I'll hitch up me breechclout and grab me stoutest corduroy satchel then venture forth a trick or treating to whar gentle folks can be found; for eets the most rewarding night of the year, as they are abroad in perpetual numbers; and by an obscure influence, invoked by the strategic positioning of the stars, for this one night only they do not feel threatened whan they spy my manifestation gaining on them from out the soupy fog.
Once I have overtaken them however, and they've been alerted to the unmistakable miasma of peril arising from my trademark™ feet, and twice five enormous unshaven toe digits, they'll allus pinch their eyes togither, drawing close to peer into my face, as if to ask a moot question wharby my malodorous breath will blitzkrieg their faculties, and hackamore their breathing. They'll swoon and not recover until secured within the confines o me haversack; a relaxed retreat whar they can associate freely with a growing number of kindred souls awaiting the inevitable thar in the darc; while back at me base camp a cauldron fusses atop a crackling fire, complaining the soup hasn't enough venison to thicken its broth. But that will change shortly....
....or I ain't TROLL.
TEE HEE HEE
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for digestion]
I am twofold eager and apprehensive, as I stand here facing east; for I have yet to see a sunrise, and I hear it is a lovely sight for mortal eyes to feast on.
I have dreamed you: who parade in the light; you that are motivated to do astounding feats thru the awareness that your days, your hours, your seconds are numbered; whereas I who have inherited no sundial possess that commodity which you would acquire: immortality.
I have dreamt you since the inception of the world; and in all that measure I have yet to see a sunrise. This is why I am resolute in my stance facing the east.
Ask yourselves tomorrow as the fledgeling sun tops a Stonehenge, erected covertly in the predawn, if a heart still beats beneath the rock. And in your quest for deeper meaning, suffer your theologians to ponder if I dream.
-Thrym [Fiercest of Giants]
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for the epiphany]
Yes, I feel the winds of change; and though I button my jacket up close to my chin, still I can feel its chill in my bones. It was blowing as the dinosaur dragged itself from the primordial swamp; and I shudder, did that gentle behemoth face it head on or turn away and let it ride on his shoulders until it had swept him up in a maelstrom of dust and legend?
Ozymandias: he was a king of kings, and yet he was blind to the sand that stung at his eye. Today, all that he built is no more. I wonder: if he could have foreseen what lay ahead would he still have tried?
Change: from Plymouth Rock, onward, and westward, everything has been altered in its wake: the bison; the native tribes; the virgin forests; and even the heavens where the eagles soar. Change has always blown, but not since it swept the passenger pigeon into oblivion has it been felt with such force as it is today blowing past the American Farm.
Still, it would be nice to sojourn now that time is fleeting by; to lean against this tilted plow, affix a thoughtful eye; on dusty roads, mid-afternoons, bare heels in the sand, and forays Neath the haloed moon before I was a man.
Those restless hours I'd lie in bed at night hearing chuck-will s widow cry, watching shadows sport under pale moonlight, hearing the winds in the willows sigh; and the frogs in the millpond springing to life long after sleep had dimmed my eye.
I have faintly felt of hungers teeth, I’ve courted winter s cold; I’ve carted home in bundled arm the newborn winter s foal; The frozen ground I’ve walked upon with Jack Frost on the scene, to make a hurried call upon the little house on the green.
Though seasons change, embers die, and paths wear thin or divide, I’ve greeted all the days gone by with my eyes open wide. An idle hinge may gather rust, a needle might lose its eye, a spring may fail and forfeit trust, but I'll not lay down and die.
I’ll free my tractor from out the shed. I’ll turn my cows out on the sod. I’ll see that my dog gets proper fed before I beeline it for God. I am not one to lament my lot even though I face eviction; The world it changed and I did not Will you miss me when I’m gone?
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for the renaissance]
Ittle Birdie? Way up high. Why does your chortle mimic a cry? Now that summer wanes. Ittle Birdie? Why do you sob? Have all your children took to wing? And failed to send you tidings. Ittle Birdie? Why do you shudder? Tis only Autumn in the air. Ushering Winter in. Ittle Birdie? What frights thee? Is it cooler days? Or longer nights? Or mere the seasons passing? Ittle Birdie? What ails thee? Why do you look so glum? Have I in my outspokenness struck you both deaf and dumb? Ittle Birdie? Why are you mute? Oh pardon me. I see it now. A cat has got your tongue. Tssk tssk [munch] [crunch] meow.
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for peppered grouse and white wine]
Once upon a time, there was a primordial ooze emerging from a bit of frozen Earth, where the sun incubated the rock in an age when all things sentient lingered in the great oblivion of sleep. An eon passed, and from that ooze was borne a cognizant thought, what rose to the surface of that stagnant pond, as a bubble does, and within its dome was sealed the recipe for transcendence.
Like a gaseous hiccup, it floated free, unrestrained, intent on being realized, but ... unable to stabilize outside its prison walls, it's hull eroded. The bubble burst, and consciousness spilled far out into the cosmos, in myriads of color. Each particle, minute to miniscule, was different, though similar in that each fragment retained an inherent sense of the missing whole, and an overwhelming desire for oneness.
But there was not one in that multitude that retained the shape of its former glory that did not deem itself to be the acme of all its composites; and this one in its arrogance, failed to assimilate, but rather, set about to eviscerate the inferior elements, until at last it had quashed all debate as to its rightful claim to eminence.
Once upon a time, there was a bubble that would be a god. But it burst at high elevation, and the primordial ooze, being long exhausted, reeks of dust and nothing else, amid the great oblivion of sleep.
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for requited brotherhood]
Oh mother I am weary. Might I rest here for awhile; in the cradle of your bosom; in the billows of your smile? The years have taxed me heavy. I have trekked a daunting mile. But all that can be forgiven if I might prop here for a while.
You'll find I am not needy. An untidy bed will do. And in the spring: a canopy to ward away the dew. In summer I am happy with naught a gown at all; but toss on me a blanket when comes around the fall. Insulate me heavy when winter rolls about; but do not bother in the spring to try and roust me out.
In lieu of answer mother sing me a lullaby; that I might enter dreamland with a moonbeam in my eye. Whereby all my soulful burdens will drop off at the side; and I'll leap into the saddle of a unicorn .... and ride.
George Lewis Avery † [-yours for the homecoming]
George Lewis Avery
