Harlequin God

The wind uses the forest to voice its thoughts. It uses the pinions of owls. I hear the words, though I don’t know the language. The dragonflies understand. The geckos do, with their flanks working like bellows. Sitting on my deck, I listen to the clack of wooden wind chimes, the tink-tink of copper ones. Something caws in the distance. I think it’s a crow. Or something mimicking a crow. My ears keep me grounded but my eyes are lost in greenery.

Twenty yards from my chair, the woods rise. Pines. Oaks. Magnolias. Cyrilla. Spanish moss twists along their limbs like the beards of old men. Blackberry brambles fill the underbrush, gravid with unripened fruit. Things hide among the green. Shadows sweep across the world with wings. Perhaps there are birds high in the air casting them. But I don’t see them; I cannot swear they are there. And the shadows are large. Perhaps they are fossil shadows, leftovers from the time of pteranodons and pterodactyls.

But the living things that fill the woods are not fossils. A moment ago, a long silken blackness raced down the bare trunk of a pine, an animal shape three feet long with a sleek head and long tail. My mind told me I’d seen the shadow of one pine swaying past another in the wind. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it because of the god who conceals himself below that spot in the bushes. He is painted many shades of green and black, and blends so well with his surroundings that I cannot tell where he ends and the world begins. Sometimes I see only his eyes, like specks of sun reflected in tear drops. Sometimes I see his torn cloak and the ratty top hat he wears. I have never seen his mouth. I don’t know if he smiles. I wonder if he has teeth, and if they are long.

The god watches me, very quietly watches me. I suspect the silk-black animal is really one of his angels. I’m sure there are more. The hide from me, even as the god tries to hide. He has planted the forest on his back as camouflage. But the wind reveals him. The voices in the breeze are prayers coming in from worshippers all over the world.   

I wonder if the god would join me if I invited him for a drink. My mind is divided. My human part suggests that he will not leave the woods, that without the glory of his surroundings he would appear only shabby and small. He could not tolerate that. The animal part of me, though, says he’s already here, hunched over and dripping behind me.  

Should I turn my head? Should I show him my own teeth? I don’t want to scare him off.  I’m very hungry, and it has been a long time since I’ve eaten a meal as fine as a god.

∼ Charles Gramlich

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