There’s a stretch of overpass somewhere after 40th on the Westside Highway, from within a cab, at night, the wind in your face, the cool wind in your face bathing your eyes, where on your right launch these sudden things, planet things, high-rises and apartment-towers lit up and mysterious like glowing-algaed underwater obelisks –

& maybe you’re a little drunk, maybe you’re relaxed and dissolving into the seat a little during this stretch of overpass after 40th, at night, when you’re in the back of this cab and everything’s okay, the night finally over, everything settling in your brain like cool milk, like a soft cool hand on your hot forehead –

– five minutes, five little minutes where everything’s absolutely okay, nothing has yet happened and nothing yet will, a glad stasis, a waiting-and-not-waiting, a being, breathing in through your nose so hard your throat feels ice-watered, the wind in your face, on your skin, in your brain –

when come the sudden things,
the giant underwater glowing things,
the high-rises noble, dispassionate,
a little cruel,
like ancient statues,
bearing witness like olmec heads, like maori,

and you’re a boy again,
on a daytrip to the beach,
praying the car won’t stop,

the salt-sea smell in your nose,
hearing the shore grow closer, distant gulls,
tasting sandgrit in your molars,
watching power lines dip and rise, dip and rise,
wanting nothing to ever choke this perfect sleeping breath
of pure motion.

I remember the juice’s vivid stains all over the cutting board, finding dried droplets days later around my white stove. It was a messy first eating, I didn’t know what I was doing. I gave myself up to clawing and gouging out the little seeds like jewels or eyes.

It’s become a kind of careful surgery for me. The prodding, coaxing a seed-cluster from the snug membrane, itself like a birth sac. But sometimes I get impatient and take bites, membrane and all, and just use my tongue to push out seeds and spit out the rest. It feels cannibalistic to eat one sometimes, like I’m violating something. Other times I feel like I’m privy to secrets just by looking inside one, groping for the right spot to nudge out a seedbundle. Then it’ll hit me, this mild awe that I’m privileged enough to be let into it, the spilling red, the little white partitions, the sweet roe, the delicate seed-sanctums.

The mole followed the dark root down. It was red and smelled sweet, but the mole knew that the tastiest bits would be at the root-ends: the tendrils and soft root-hairs there would be full of secret flavor. So he pledged not to bite until the end.

After a day of digging, the root showed no sign of tapering. The mole, irked & exhausted, nursed his claws and took a break.

“This root has to end at some point, ” said the mole. “But meanwhile the air’s getting warmer and harder to breathe, and I don’t recognize this soil: it smells different, it’s more dense.”

During the second day of digging, it was obvious that the root was tapering — but at this rate he wouldn’t reach its tips for a week. The mole was astonished, but mad with determination. His anger mounting, he forgot about his safe burrow, loving family, and ample food-store above: he dug and dug, blind to his own exhaustion, making slower and slower progress in the tough, alien soil, coughing frequently in the strange warm air.

On the third day of digging the mole broke his right paw. He sat still, in a fog, realizing his predicament. The red root like a giant column stood before him, endless. He stared at it in desperation, then vowed to dig with just his snout if he had to until he reached the bottom of it. He felt himself going insane. Fury boiled his blood.

Just then he heard a great rumbling above him: his tunnel, miles-long, was collapsing. With his one good paw he dug a small niche to one side and watched as dirt crashed and filled up everything around him. He cleared a little space, taking short, shallow breaths from the hot air in his tiny chamber. He prepared himself to die.

An idea gripped him. He cleared away dirt until a small patch of the rich red root was visible. He took a great bite out of its rootflesh. It was disgustingly bitter, but he bit it again, clamping hard this time. He was determined to have one last feast, even if it wasn’t from the precious root-ends he’d wanted.
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The toad trembled on the highest branch of the tallest tree in the forest, nibbling the moss that grew there.

He’d eaten all the moss except for a few last patches, and only now realized where he was, as the last mouthful sat half-chewed in his jaws.

“How did I get here, just feet from clouds? All my brothers and sisters are far below and I can’t even see them. I don’t even remember climbing this high. How am I going to get down?”

Just then he noticed an ant on a leaf nearby.

“Ant,” said the toad, “Can you help me?”

“If I can,” said the ant, “But I don’t know why I’m here myself. All I know is I was hungry and followed the tree’s tasty leaves to the top. I’m too scared to crawl back. Maybe we can work together to get down.”

The toad flicked his tongue and ate the ant.

“I think I will live here from now on,” said the Toad.

   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2007

A maggot was feasting on the decaying flesh of a dead king.

Nearby, a tick, who was busy feasting on a living king, called out to the maggot: “Maggot: you’re crazy. Why are you eating from a filthy corpse when you can taste the sweet blood of the living?”

At that moment the king, oppressed by the tick for years, in a fit of despair lit his body on fire.

   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2007