wider and wider, the ring you saw. You were lucky to see it at all. Causewhen it got to the edge of the puddle it left the puddle and entered the air instead, it went invisible. A marvel. Didn’t you feel it go through you? No? But it did, you’re inside it now. I am too. We both are. And the yard. And the brickpiles. And the sandpiles. And the firing shed. And the houses. And the horses, and your father, your uncle, and your brothers, and the workmen, and the street. And the other houses. And the walls, and the gardens and houses, the churches, the palace tower, the top of the cathedral, the river, the fields behind us, the fields way over there, see? See how far your eye can go. See the tower and the houses in the distance? It’s passing through them and nothing and nobody will feel a thing but there it is doing it nonetheless. And imagine it circling the fields and the farms we can’t see from here. And the towns beyond those fields and farms all the way to the sea. And across the sea. The ring you saw in the water’ll never stop travelling till the edge of the world and then when it reaches the edge it’ll go beyond that too. Nothing can stop it.
She looked down into the horse piss.
And all from the fall of a seed, she said. You see that seed there? You know where it came from?
She pointed above us to the trees behind our house.
If we put that seed in the ground, she said, and we cover it with earth and it gets the chance,enough sun, enough water, with a bit of luck and justice it’ll make another tree.
The trees were much bigger than even the brickpiles : the trees went way beyond the roof of the house made by my father’s father’s father : we were a family of wallmakers and brickmen : it was what the men of our family did when they left boyhood : my family helped build the Est palaces, the Ests had rooms at all cause of us : we were historic, as anonymous wallmakers go.
I fished the seed out of the piss : it was a thing that has to fall to rise : it looked like a shrunken head like the heads that got put on the walls after uprisings but with a wing coming out the back of it : it smelt fine of horse : it had 1 wing not 2 like birds : perhaps that was why it fell : and cause it had, something would rise.
I dropped it back in : it fell again : 1 day right here cause of it a tree would be shooting upwards, with a bit of luck and justice.
A new ring formed, disappeared, went through me invisible and off out into the world.
My mother was back at the barrel climbing over the side : she started singing again : every time she tramped down rings like the seed-rings I’d seen appear and disappear came off her legs in the water in the barrel : the rings widened, came out round her round the barrel then they went through me and round me too (a marvel) and off into the restof the world in a huge sort of holding that happened when something came into or passed through another thing : the sun was already shrinking the piss : a new ring formed where the piss had been and gone : in its going it changed the stone of the path to a lighter different colour.
Then it was another time : there were yellow flowers dropping off the trees : they landed with a sound : who knew flowers had a voice? I was much better at throwing now : now when I threw I could always hit the barrel – and not just hit it, I could choose where to hit it, on the metal buckle or the top or bottom rim or whichever stave I aimed at.
I could throw now too so that I never hit a chicken unless I wanted to : it was cruel, though, to want to, and tempting, so I’d become an expert at almost : since if I threw it so it almost hit (but missed) a chicken would still do the funny dance to the music of the general bird outrage : there were no chickens or geese to almost hit today though, cause every time I came out into the yard now all the chickens and geese and ducks ran away shouting to the front of the house, and every time I came round the front after
Christine Zolendz, Frankie Sutton, Okaycreations