Lion Dreams

 

Lion Dreams

Harvey lurches, never walks.
His body is a puppet strung loose.
Can’t hit a baseball to save his life.
Roger the bully calls him Special Spaz.

I like Harvey, like his questions
that teachers won’t answer.
Questions like “If a lion eats you,
do you enter the lion’s soul? And then
when the lion dreams, do you dream?”

Next time Roger calls him Special Spaz,
Harvey says “We’re each special in our
own weird way. You’re special, too.”
“You calling me weird? Huh? You—”
That’s when I get grade-school famous
for kicking Roger in the nuts. Which
makes me special in that weird way.

A few decades pass to now,
this grassy park overlooking the Pacific
a continent’s width from Atlantic grade school.
I’m sitting on a black metal bench
eating a KFC drumstick. A man
beside me with short white beard,
white hair in a ponytail, tosses popcorn to
strutting doves and says “If you eat chicken,
do you swallow chicken soul?”

I gape, we laugh, we marvel at the meeting,
shake hands. His arm jerks at the elbow,
loose-jointed. Grip firm.
He says “I teach Theology at Long Beach.”
I say “I fix houses. Rehab and restore.”
“You remove the rot. Funny,” he says, “how
we are what we are before we ever know.
All of us, from conception, we are
swallowed by lions.”

…..

First published in Red Wolf Journal—thank you Irene Toh, editor
Photo by “mystery cat” on Unsplash