Paul Hostovsky

After Ian Sanborn’s ASL poem of the same title A man with eyes as blank as the indifference of nature is staring straight ahead as the whole thing unfolds. He has a black beard, black shirt, black woolen cap — he could be a thief — you better keep your eyes on his hands which have begun clearing a clearing. Here he plants a seed as small as his own fingernail, and shazam! it sprouts roots, shoots, stems, branches — a whole tree shouldering up, tossing and swaying in the air between the sun’s magic hands and the man’s indifferent eyes. Next thing you know, an orphan index finger is worming its way across the stage that wasn’t a stage until your eyeing it made it so. It inches over to the tree like a lost knuckle finding its way home, its feelers testing, feeling, sniffing, finding purchase, finding a toe-hold, the tiny, spiny, hairy, leg-like appendages beginning to wiggle, to climb, to shinny up the tree, the elbow, the sheer escarpment, pausing to send out a line, a lasso, a long rope as fine as the filament of a spider launched from its abdomen and hooking the thumb of the lowest branch. A rope for rappelling, for jumping off this cliff, taking this dive, twisting as it untwists, enfolding as it unfolds, holding on for dear life as it spins itself into silk, those indifferent eyes almost imperceptibly squinting in sympathy with this closing up, this cloaking, this cloistering, this hanging upside down with a pulse inside. A fluttering pulse. A pulse like the flutter of eyelids. Like the flutter of wings. A heartbeat growing stronger, stronger, breaking out, breaking free, the wings opening, the eyes opening as if all this time they were closed — the blank eyes opening to the wings, taking them in, incredulous, in love with them — and the black and white has grown iridescent; the orphaned knuckle has found the hands; the hands have found their wings, and we are all utterly blown away. Ian Sanborn's ASL poem may be viewed here .