Said and Done, and: Otter and Bear

49 Martha Hollander Said and Done Opening the wrong door at a party, I watched as a pair of passionate thirteen-year-olds lying on the rug moved at the same moment and began kissing. The girl fixed a ravenous, round eye on the mirror; she had already memorized her story. She was like the ancient oracle on her tripod, perched over the precarious rocky cleft that blew its message upward into her thin skin, as she let it fly on the longing crowd. She was like the summer goddess Marilyn teasing the netherworld on her subway grating, her voice as hot and dreamy as the wind setting her white skirt awhirl with promise. Feeling the invading breath of invention, speaking of what's past and coming, you say what's aching to be heard, as if desire and grief only came into being as you predict, relate, or recollect. When you told one of your secrets at the picnic, Your utterance hung in the air like the fog curled round the piers of the Golden Gate. We have to do without interpreters, so I leaned forward to catch it, straining with the absurd force of a hungry child in love. Otter and Bear A sunless day. The trees form a lattice across the sky: crushed paper or cracked glass. The dusky brown banks nestle close to the river scudding by them silverly. Bear skulks into view, leaving behind a pine forest as dark as his inscrutable pelt. Tiny Otter shoots a look at him as she prepares to gnaw a freshly killed 50 the minnesota review salmon on the freezing riverbank. Otter endows Bear's life with domesticity and anger, envy and community. Whenever he awakens in the woods, she will be near. I have new shoes for water and for land. They are soft kid, with a celebration of buttons, white, impervious to the rich spring mud. There on the bank, innocently black The dusky brown banks nestle close to the river scudding by them silverly. Bear skulks into view, leaving behind a pine forest as dark as his inscrutable pelt. Tmy Otter shoots a look at him as she prepares to gnaw a freshly killed salmon on the freezing riverbank. Otter endows Bear's life with domesticity and anger, envy and community. Whenever he awakens in the woods, she will be near. I have new shoes for water and for land. They are soft kid, with a celebration of buttons, white, impervious to the rich spring mud. There on the bank, innocently black white, impervious to the rich spring mud. There on the bank, innocently black against the stones, Bear pads into view. Alarmed, I run down to the water's edge and the brown creature is under me, carrying me into the river. Between my knees it becomes Otter. Riding her smooth back, I sail along the current toward a distant patch of reeds that marks the edge of eternity, where she will be near. ...