PDF

Real World


by Darryl Price


The fruit goes bad if you don't eat it in 
time. It has its time to complement you 
with itself. When it does, when all's right, you 
become the fruit and the fruit becomes you. 
A real world reminder of how seeds work. 

When you are the fruit, you may create strawberry 
fields of vision. When the fruit is 
you, it may look at the sun and sailboats 
on the water and enjoy the view like 
any other bird or a cloud. All things 

respond to a comfortable wind with a 
small hopeful smile. There can be jerks on sailboats 
but I wonder if sailboats themselves 
can be jerks? The Japanese believe inanimate 
objects can possess a kind 

of living spirit if they are pushed to 
it. I don't know if magic is the right 
word for it because they seem to be talking 
about your broom as a kind of broom 
person and not just a handy cleaning 

tool. My albums seem to love to fall over 
all by themselves sometimes. The world is 
a funny place. Let's start there. When you go 
acting on an adventure impulse everything 
you do is a potential dangerous 

deterrent to your making it 
back in time for chocolate cake. You can 
read that a million different ways or you 
can pretend you only understand English. 
When I was a boy I wanted to 

tell you something I saw in the forest 
that suddenly made everything make sense, 
but you only laughed. When I was an angry 
young man, I tried to find the right words 
for everything everywhere, but the words 

just couldn't begin to reach that far. Now 
that I am here, I only wish I had 
told you sooner that your spirit has been 
a necessary and wonderful part 
of my own world and journey. This story

is not private. I want you to see it. 
Maybe it will get up all by itself 
and dance around. Be someone. Animate 
a bunch of words into a story. Tell
you a secret. Show you a meaning. You

never know. I've enjoyed walking through this 
poem with you. We should do it again. 
It's not too late as long as we believe
in the moment as something alive and
not just carved out of stone, something timely.
Endcap