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UNFINISHED
PUZZLE
by Kevin McMahon
Time once paused at a particular event
And briefly lost
its bearings:
A storm followed light into shadow
And drove people into their minds
Deeply there they went
To await illumination
And from the battleground of thought
and emotion
An image came together in the eye of a
newborn
With colors interlocked by fine-cut
fingers of cardboard
a jigsawed
depiction of a figure with golden wings:
Icarus tumbling before
a condescending sun
looking down upon his fate with
disbelief
But the count of unassembled pieces
proved too many;
the child’s attention turned away
And he abandoned the puzzle while its
assembly was still incomplete
To grow up instead
He opened a door to find the World
waiting
He crossed the threshold of the doorway
And the rain stopped and the clouds
broke
The storm had given way to a sunrise
On his way to morning classes
He nearly tripped over a fallen branch
thrown to the ground in the storm’s
fury.
And the graze of his shoe sliced off a
hook-shaped fragment.
From a nearby perch
A yellowbird turned at the sight of the
boy emerging from Inside
And noticing the boy’s misstep had
dislodged the hook-shaped piece
The yellowbird flocked to retrieve its
newfound treasure
The lunch hour saw the young man hired
To broker transactions of asset-backed
commercial paper
Employment in the economic machine
stays hunger. And coldness.
And questions without answers.
With the afternoon came middle age and
the worries of prosperity
He fretted under the peak of the sun’s
arc
So many problems needed solutions, and
he struggled to fit the pieces together
The yellowbird called to him, but he
did not hear
Now an old man watches a golden color
recede in the western sky
And in his eye is born a reflection:
An image of a figure with burning wings
Falling from the fate of illumination
But this eye is itself an image
Held in place with interlocking
hook-shaped fragments
The yellowbird uses them to piece
together its nest
and asks “What do you make of this?”
copyright Kevin McMahon,
2008