{"id":651,"date":"2012-10-22T11:43:29","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T18:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=651"},"modified":"2012-10-04T11:55:52","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T18:55:52","slug":"rods-and-reels-by-elizabeth-barrette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=651","title":{"rendered":"Rods and Reels by Elizabeth Barrette"},"content":{"rendered":"
When the Goddess of Light <\/span><\/div>\n
dropped the rod of glass <\/span><\/div>\n
with which she controlled the sun,<\/span><\/div>\n
it shattered into a million splinters<\/span><\/div>\n
raining down from the brilliant sky, <\/span><\/div>\n
each one remaining a magic rod in its own right.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the splinters fell on the heads of women,<\/span><\/div>\n
they became rod cells, <\/span><\/div>\n
inserting their subtle vision into innocent eyes.<\/span><\/div>\n
For the women, <\/span><\/div>\n
only glimpses emerged<\/span><\/div>\n
from the thick dark shadows of chance.<\/span><\/div>\n
For their daughters, however,<\/span><\/div>\n
the future bloomed with color and light<\/span><\/div>\n
against which mortal motion<\/span><\/div>\n
was mere shadowplay.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the girl cracked her head <\/span><\/div>\n
on the playground bench, no one thought anything of it<\/span><\/div>\n
until she lost count of the healer’s fingers<\/span><\/div>\n
flickering through infinite possibilities.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the blood stopped<\/span><\/div>\n
and the wound faded to a wasp-waisted scar,<\/span><\/div>\n
the double vision remained.<\/span><\/div>\n
She could see the past out of one eye<\/span><\/div>\n
and the future out of the other, <\/span><\/div>\n
intricately overlain.<\/span><\/div>\n
She could see separate potentials out of each eye, <\/span><\/div>\n
and hold them up to some ephemeral sun<\/span><\/div>\n
to see the differences.<\/span><\/div>\n
But she could not navigate between them,<\/span><\/div>\n
nor tell anyone<\/span><\/div>\n
how to get from here to there.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the young woman went to the social<\/span><\/div>\n
at her father’s stern command,<\/span><\/div>\n
it didn’t take a seer to foretell disaster.<\/span><\/div>\n
Yet the moment her slippered foot snagged in her moon-blue skirt<\/span><\/div>\n
and sent her face pitching toward the parquet floor,<\/span><\/div>\n
a hand appeared beneath her elbow<\/span><\/div>\n
to save the day.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the musicians called for a reel,<\/span><\/div>\n
the young man led his stumbling date into the dance.<\/span><\/div>\n
He felt the music through the floor,<\/span><\/div>\n
for he could not hear it with his ears,<\/span><\/div>\n
and he pulled their four feet into the perfect rhythm.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the reels changed to a slow dance,<\/span><\/div>\n
the young woman leaned her head on her date’s shoulder<\/span><\/div>\n
and closed her eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 The future squeezed itself around her<\/span><\/div>\n
with a strangely familiar grip, and she could<\/span><\/div>\n
understand it better without the distraction of daylight.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the young woman pulled away,<\/span><\/div>\n
it was Time itself that counted the time for her dancing.<\/span><\/div>\n
Her hips suddenly hung like a pendulum from the clock of fate<\/span><\/div>\n
and her feet flew through the steps<\/span><\/div>\n
with flawless grace.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the young man saw her begin to move<\/span><\/div>\n
to the beat of a different, hidden drum<\/span><\/div>\n
he looked down and began to perceive<\/span><\/div>\n
the decisions scattered like dust at her feet.<\/span><\/div>\n
Then he remembered his lazy summer afternoons<\/span><\/div>\n
spent studying the busy bees in their golden ballrooms,<\/span><\/div>\n
dancing, dancing their way across the combs<\/span><\/div>\n
as they told off the trip to the nectar fields.<\/span><\/div>\n
He called out the future in his loud flat voice<\/span><\/div>\n
and the sages chaperoning the social<\/span><\/div>\n
hastened to take notes.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the two were married,<\/span><\/div>\n
it was no surprise to anyone who knew them,<\/span><\/div>\n
for their eyes were filled with no one but each other<\/span><\/div>\n
from the moment they met.<\/span><\/div>\n
They made their fortune from telling fortunes<\/span><\/div>\n
and the distant, shifting futures of the land they called home.<\/span><\/div>\n
Together they made their way <\/span><\/div>\n
safely through the lengthening days.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When the baby came,<\/span><\/div>\n
the midwife fussed over her in the usual way,<\/span><\/div>\n
and failed to notice that she was not a usual babe<\/span><\/div>\n
as deft hands tucked her away in a dark quiet room.<\/span><\/div>\n
The baby’s eyes glittered in reflections of invisible light<\/span><\/div>\n
and her ears twitch, twitch, twitched in pursuit of silent sounds.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Goddess of Light dropped the rod of glass with which she controlled the sun, it shattered into a million splinters raining down from the brilliant sky, each one remaining a magic rod in its own right. When the splinters fell on the heads of women, they became rod cells, inserting their subtle vision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}