My Wife

When you dumped a whole plateful of stringbeans on the napping cat, when you stood there in one sock, coughing, when you mispronounced “canopy” and everyone thought you were speaking a new language, when you flipped-over backward in the stuffed chair, feet flying high overhead as you vanished behind the overturned chair, when you wore your shirt inside-out for the entire day...that’s when I loved you most.

--Mitchell Hegman

Galileo

Galileo, accused of heresy for arguing his view that Earth was not at the center of the universe before the Inquisition, said: “The Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Juniper, Vital

Juniper, Vital, Though Never Immortal (For Norman, who dug Grandmother’s grave)
The scent of this autumn’s juniper is without bottom,
but your death, compeer, is final.
Now the long cold retreat.
To sleep the caged gorilla , the snarling dog,
the rosy child, trillium.

This low raft of hills we call life
embraces only the things rounded:
sage tents, tufts, pines camelled green,
these ancient river stones at my feet.
You, my votary, my sweet wound, have been made square,
made to disappear.

Think of our common dream,
the twenties jazz become metabolic,
babes grown to full dress.
Lever to gear to fuel to beast to pastry.
Come and go, then, go.

Every hole is any eye on something we never saw before,
every moment a contradiction,
every name a little sad.
And the place where we part?
This is where we should choose to begin,
and to begin, we dig.

--Mitchell Hegman

Morning Nonsense

I woke to broken morning light and one of my cats purring in my ear. At present, Montana is experimenting with a confused version of spring: frost, fifty-degrees, snow, sunshine, a great deal of wind. In particular, both of my cats would like me to do something about the wind. I cannot convince them that this is beyond my ability. As the light in my window gradually blushed red and then brightened, I saw low clouds crawling across the snowy mountains. The weather here is always strange, but I like waking to these twisting surprises.

--Mitchell Hegman

A DAREDEVIL’S LAST THOUGHT:

Gee...I wonder why nobody else has tried this before?

--Mitchell Hegman