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Mike Finley |
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BILLBOARD Mounted above a TV repair shop along Dale Street in Saint Paul is a billboard with the immense face of a man on it, thirty feet tall, as tall as a movie screen. His tie is askew, his collar is wild, like a man who has been running in his suit. His coloring is all wrong, orange and blotchy red, as if he spent hours in a tanning booth, then guzzled down a fifth of cheap gin. The man is perhaps 30, and he is holding a phone to his ear and smiling, but the receiver does not appear to be connected. "I'm Steve Larson of Sunset Realty," the sign says, "and I buy homes for cash!" He seems both innocent and crude, as if having the belief that just seeing his huge face, faking a phone call, grinning from high above the traffic, will make us want to hand over our houses and give him the keys. I imagine his pals clap him on the back for pulling off this stunt but that even he knows, when he drives this way late at night, When the traffic dies down, that he could not be nakeder to the world, promising cash in hand if people will only turn over their lives to him, than if that giant face were festooned on the moon, agog at all that is possible below. SNEEZE We are fluff that has been blown on, We part company with one another And float into the aloneness. We wander so long Borne aloft by breath, aching To see one another again Yearning to be stitched together at the foot And it is like that until one day we come to rest And realize that we carried the secret Inside us all along, that we arise From the core of a golden sun And the day of blooming ourselves Has been gathering inside us All the while |