"Nuts," said our dear Barbara Enders, on being shown why her case was hopelessly inoperable. At which word a member of her soul's ecology that for years she had overlooked and ignored (it was so common) came scampering over the wires of her consciousness, made a leap, and landed on her shoulder, swishing its flag-like tail.
"Oh look!" it said, indicating the scan the doctor had set before her. "Your tumor, lodged in the blood vessels and dendrites of your brain, is like my nest clotted in the bare branches of December. It too is a sort of covered bridge over seasons, a shelter that some instinctively over-wintering part of you has built as storehouse and habitation."
And he went on to tell her what it might be like for her to curl up in that dark spot on the scan and [ ? ], [ ? ] till, swayed by a wind whose warmth she'd surely recognize, she woke as one of the choice acrobats of spring.
And from that day on till the end, Barbara walked around in a measured way, keeping the creature continually balanced on her shoulder, never bending too suddenly, and always looking out over the nearby cornfields for hawks and kestrels--not out of anxiety for herself of course, but lest this creature she now so loved should ever be startled into leaving.
HB
No comments:
Post a Comment