Ensemble

How I longed to bend and embrace her then! And as though my wish had been granted, a sudden strong wind bent my lowest bough lower, low enough for her to catch, and with her powerful farm-girl’s arms she pulled herself up. For a moment she balanced herself there on the bough, a moment of ecstasy for me as I felt her cheeks brush my needle-tips and her fingers tighten—and that softness between her legs where she sat. Still the bird taunted her, dared her, implored her, and as if entranced by a Siren, she climbed higher. It flickered like a flame in the rising wind, declaiming like an orator of old, and I began to understand what it was trying to say, even if all she heard was the song of a lark. Believe me. For I was a god before I was a liar.

  “Be still,” the little bird told me, as if I could be anything but. “I have come to praise you. When all the world has passed you by, when all things have changed, you’ve been patient. Things have changed, you know, in the world of men.” He was whispering into a knothole now, as if she might overhear. “It’s their world now. Ordinary mortals! The age of poets and heroes is over. All the gods have fled Olympus. You’ve been better off standing here, noticing nothing. You who were once so lascivious, so avaricious, so meretricious, no longer desired anything but her love. Here she is, take her. That kind of love, the kind that can last an eternity, is beyond my mischief. Perhaps you’ve become noble, you who were once so foolish.”

  Here the meadowlark paused and combed his pinions, as if he’d admitted too much. “Ha! I never liked you,” he added in a lower voice. “I came here to help you just to make myself feel better. You’re so vain you think little birds have come to sing your praises. You’d just as soon think Jove sent me here! And I can tell you’re as dirty-minded as ever. Look at you

  —every bit the hardwood.”

  Not that I was listening anymore to that little twit. Well, I couldn’t help myself; she had straddled my trunk and I felt my bark snag her flimsy summer shift—I shuddered up and down my immense length and she shimmied upwards, breasts chafing against me, thighs tight around my girth, until all her clothing was in shreds and her sun-browned body sticky and aromatic with resin. The wind whipped through my boughs, I moaned, that insane bird was still twittering far up in the heights. Was she mad, too? Had Cupid cast a charm with his music, was this a panic worthy of Pan? She grazed her whole body against me as she heaved herself ever higher; she was bruised and bleeding and yet I could distinctly hear her laughing above the wind and the creaking of my limbs and the enchanted lark. Or perhaps I was holding onto her as much as she held me—there were splinters under her nails but my branches were now festooned with her underthings as, naked, beautiful, imperious as Venus herself, she ascended. Higher, still higher… In the vespertine thrall of heat and friction and song and wind we swayed together, the bird now perched on my topmost branch and she clinging to the limb just beneath like a sailor who has mounted the mast in a storm. Like a sailor, too, she held to the timber with one hand and shielded her eyes with the other as she scanned the horizon far below her.

  Spread out below us we both surveyed the bosomy green earth, its sunlit peaks and shadowy valleys, the gentle slopes and craggy cliffs all. Forest and field, meadow and marsh, cow-path and wagon-way were unfolded before us like an enormous map, and we could see every detail together: the toy farms, the miniature mills and granaries, the cemeteries with their marble game-pieces, ribands of streams and little silver serving bowls that were lakes, the temple steeples and whitewashed cupolas rising above the distant shining towns. And in the last lantern-rays which friendly Phoebus was so kind as to cast our way, we looked down across this trompe l’oeil landscape into the nearest village and saw children dancing in circles, youths walking side by side and hand in hand, lovers sprawled on picnic blankets, widows and widowers kissing on torch-lit porches.

  For the first time, the last time, she looked down into my branches and seemed to see me for who I really was, to know then that I loved her absolutely and everlastingly. She smiled, I was sure of that. Could she be remembering, and if so, could she possibly have forgiven my rashness and brutality all those centuries ago? “Ah, yes, my friend—something gold does stay,” was the last the lark said to me—and unseen, that serendipitous bird had flown off into the dewy Arcadian night. We swayed together. She caught her breath and I felt her shiver in the cooling air. It did not matter now that I was a white spruce tree and she was a mortal, a woman. Ring within ring, in my core of cores, I realized that the bird’s song had lit something lambent and merciful inside her and that now, although she could never articulate it, she understood, as well. So—grasping the topmost of my branches with the passion of a Fury, the eagerness of a bride rising to kiss her groom, she hoisted herself higher still and…

  i) Metamorphosed into a glorious winged creature not found in any bestiary and for

  which there is no Latin taxonomy, she flies bold and fearless into the snowy empyrean;

  ii) She constellates each exquisite silvery angle of herself among all those legendary stars;

  and/or

  iii) Both of us transformed by a love worthy of the books, she reaches back to take

  my hand and pulls me upwards, too—for I am once again a god, yet humbled, and she, a new-crowned goddess.

  Frog Baby

  Here, now, this night—here it is. Here is the jar. Here is the baby. The jar is filled with something that may be alcohol or formaldehyde yellowed with age. The thick glass of the jar, if you touched it, would feel cold. Inside the jar the baby looks cold, shriveled, its skin very white under the bright lamp. The skin looks waxen, hairless. A lacework of dark veins shines through the skin. The limbs are stunted, twisted at the joints. The head and torso are squat and amphibian. There doesn’t seem to be a neck. An umbilical cord, sprouted from the abdomen, is twisted between the legs. Its eyes are like large white grapes. They are wide open. Dead eyes. The fingers and toes are curled under. Webs of skin fuse several of the digits. One fist presses against a cheek. The thumb touches its slightly parted lips. The baby looks ready to make a sound, very high, very soft.

  This is no frog, you would say. This is a human baby. A deformed embryo. No mutant at all. just a baby. But you wouldn’t like looking at it, just the same. It would be something to remember, later, in the dark of the night, and you wouldn’t like it at all.

  Here, now, this night. It is late. It is hot. Overhead, nighthawks shriek and swoop after mosquitoes. Most of the crowd has gone home. The lingerers walk slowly, slowly across the sawdusted fairgrounds. You might be there, among them, not wanting to go home, but not really wanting to do much else. Everyone is worn down by the heat, the long summer day. Tired, drunk, sweaty.

  There is the carnie grub. He coughs and spits with great force. There is a microphone like a toy chromium rocket in his hands. Time to do his number for the thousandth time that day. Spits again. The carnie grub’s voice is Texan, nasal . It is high, almost girlish. He is really just a kid, not that much older than you, but looks ancient under his grease, the way all carnie grubs do. He speaks fast like a girl, too, in breathless phrases. His words echo and fade out over the fairgrounds. They are a jumble, half lost in the distortion: Gave birth monster miracle medical science history incredible shocking won’t believe your eyes half human half frog only fifty cents miracle frog baby monster miracle...

  The carnie grub is standing before a sideshow trailer. The trailer is plastered with posters of the exhibit. There is a picture of a frog with little girl curls in a blue dress, riding a tricycle. There is another picture of the baby slurping a lollipop with a long long frog tongue. Here, it straddles a lily pad, there, it catches flies. A wide human smile on its enlarged face. But something horrible about the pictures, all the same.

  A few stragglers have gathered around the trailer, not really listening to what the carnie grub has to say, though your ears echo with the words: Won’t believe it Christian mother amazing last chance tonight see
to believe… Closer now, you see that the barker’s fingers and fingernails are black with grease. His hair is even greasier. He combs his greasy hand through his greasy hair. He is sweating—there are dark crescents under the arms of his dirty T-shirt. He wipes his forehead with a soiled rag he plucks from his back pocket. His chest is bony and his arms are covered with blurred tattoos. And yet—and yet there is something refined about him, almost feminine. He might be a dancer, an acrobat.

  Of course you should save your quarters, but you want so much to be included. You want to lose yourself among these people, watch them as they watch the frog baby. Afraid, yes, but it is the fear that leads you on. Like last year when you saw the missing link and the snake girl. Later, yes, there will be the dreams and the sudden awakenings in bed. But now there is the thrill. Now there is the attraction of the crowd, of the unknown. You will lose yourself, for now.

  The ticket girl who takes your quarters is not a young girl. She is not really a girl at all. She is very, very, very old. Her skin is powdery white, her hair is dyed too red, and her broken, bitten fingernails are a matching red. She