Standing still for a minute in the park, it’s like a Disney movie—the birds and squirrels gather round.  All I need are deer and butterflies…

What’s the difference between this bird, with his mohawk and orange beak, turning sideways to look at me with one bright eye, and the new leaves swaying behind him?

Plants and animals split off from an earlier life-form.  And on the sea floor there are vegetables with mouths.

The tulips, so upright and alive, like a teenage choir.  And this squirrel rising up on two legs to stare at me.

Look at those shoulders, arms and forearms, chest.  Even a navel!

No doubt we communicate creature to creature.  I try to beam him good will.  Can’t eat good will.  He scampers off, with a single curse, then leaps onto the trunk of a tree, powers up the spiral stair.  Our one encounter in this life…

And the tulip.  Little ice cliff of flower flesh.  Mentally, I draw eyes on you, undo them.  Something surges in me that may be akin to photosynthesis or the rising of sap.  Is it possible, is it even remotely possible, that the tulip is exhilarated by its viewers?

The birches are radiant in themselves.   And then there’s sun from a clear sky, on them, on all the trees, shining on the people carrying their coats, showing skin–a whole radiant atmosphere connecting everything. 

Birds and squirrels—we get to see you pursue your purpose, and we change it, unimportantly; if it wasn’t me, it would be a noise, or even an inner impulse.

Bird with the orange beak, perched on a low wire fence.  I know this will be brief.  But it’s actually lasting a while, through many jerky frame by frame movements of your head… 

Branch of new leaves, you work your magic on me.  You’re not going anywhere.  I sink into you, smiling.  Pure life shining.  Something in me lets your swaying slow my heartbeat.

1

Fasting, I rose through the worlds, saw Plato’s Forms and the hypostases, the shining hallucinatory onyx and alabaster floors of the realm to which Enoch had risen.  And I knew that somewhere above was the divine throne–I could feel it pressing down.

The mystics were right!  They were all right.  They had each seen bits and pieces.

But as I broke the surface of the seventh heaven, I realized they had all missed something huge.  So vast and basic.  An essential truth about the universe.  And I couldn’t wait to return and reveal it to the human race.

The angels were animals.  They had the most beautiful white wings.  Some had iridescent wings, just the colors of Renaissance paintings.  Giotto and the others had seen correctly.

But they were dogs and cats in face and body. Same fur, same eyes and panting tongues.  Same sweet muzzles.  Behaving the same.  Barking, meowing.  Cruising along, sniffing and playing (with a touch more majesty).

My eyes grew wide, my cheeks puffed out with the secret.  But when I returned, I was mute.  Who would believe me?  Even my family.  What, would I put it on Facebook?   So I kept it to myself.  But when I walked the streets, thick with people with their dogs, I saw clearly now.  Saw that these dogs had sacrificed their proximity to God, left an inexpressible warmth, to bring us love, allow us to love.  And when I visited a friend, with her tabby asleep on the couch, when I looked into the eyes of a random dog or cat, I could see their true nature above.  And the wetness of their noses was intact from that realm.

2

Now bred for sweetness, loyalty.  Love muffin to strangers, even to Hitler!  What were those hunter-gatherers thinking as they watched the wolves inch forward then retreat.  And what were the wolves thinking?  With the instincts of tube worms and ants, they had a vision of symbiosis.  Feed me, shelter me, and in generations I’ll let you pet me. You like that, huh?  It calms you down.  You feel all mushy.  Well, it’s been a long time since anyone nuzzled me.  I admit I enjoy this thing with your hand too. Yeah, get the top of my head. 

And in centuries, I may roll over and show you my belly.  My eyes are rolling back.  Dammit!  This is embarrassing.  And the wild cats, hissing and clawing, incessantly hunting, say, ‘In centuries, I may let you touch me, but shoot me if I start purring.  Dammit!  Well, shoot me if I ever beg and come running to a bowl.  Oh, man.  I’m in the evolutionary chute.  My parents liked you.  For their sake, driven by my blood, I’ll snuggle with you.  We’re in the evolutionary chute together, here on the couch.  You’re my father. 

All the different subcultures and the millions of opinions had formed a crude body politic. The parts did not quite reject each other; the thick stitching and livid joinings had healed over into just skin.  We could lurch around, drink water from the stream, appreciate the flowers, grunting and cooing at them.

We had lactating breasts for the growing population, and the genitals of both sexes; we used birth control and we didn’t.

And we watched the news.

Then suddenly a man appeared at my bedside in the middle of the night.  He restrained me in iron cuffs.  And all night, he ran his fingers over me, searching out the lines between parties, between races.

I had always been conflicted, of course, but I could function.  I had many voices in my head, but they were whispers; the overriding voice was me.  And I could control my limbs, my movements, with pretty good precision, passing laws intended to help.

But his fingers—it was uncanny the way he knew where to press.  As if I had scurvy, my old scars opened… 

The cognitive dissonance I’d always lived with began to scream.  Two voices screaming incessantly, clawing at each other.  Right there on the bed, I started to hemorrhage.  And separate.  There is my hand, bleeding from the wrist into the blanket.  To move it now would take telekinesis.

I can’t unite the voices anymore.  The man is kneeling at my bed again, his fingertips searching.  Mercifully I’m going away.  I hate him, my enemy, my destroyer.  With my last bit of consciousness, last bit of will, I vote for him.