The Stick

Existence trumps nonexistence every time. It has all the colors and all the shapes and all the moves, it is rude in its bounty and its grotesque reach that overcomes all before it. This bit of stick I found in the park was showing off because the dead can’t have it. They can’t have any of it. It was sticky and prickled with a showy, dazzling presence, though it’s quietened a little now, now that I’ve taken it home and have it here on the mantelpiece. It has dressed in purple robes and carried its being like a chalice with such disarming mock-solemnity down and down the pale carved steps into its candlelit depths. Its being rests inside it now and purrs quite inaudibly with a sound like the most exclusive refrigerator, or a sound you might take for your own sovereign wheels spinning. Little stick. Wait for me. I’m coming.