WALNUT, IOWA, USA

 

WALNUT, IOWA, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

FREMONT, NE, USA

 

FREMONT, NE, USA

 

FREMONT, NE, USA

 

FREMONT, NE, USA

 

FREMONT, NE, USA

 

    Breach 

He was there, and then he wasn’t. 

This rather uncanny cancel. 

This quotient gone quizzical, 

we tilt our heads; 

   we purse our lips. 

We of gill beguiled prove 

   an ordained hypothesis 

that upon this, our moment of death, 

we all invert and float upward. 

 

Divine? 

   Please define. 

Just how could this be so? 

So oh so,   oh so    buoyant. 

And I’d like to point out 

that this act is not some 

fatuous figment of perceived theology. 

That the horror inherent to 

falling off the edge of the world 

is only relevant to those who 

comprehend the act of falling. 

 

And here there remains a heretical belief 

that upon the moment of death, 

we somehow come to fall, 

yet for those of dorsal fin, 

such grave gravity is a 

nonsensical    sensation. 

Be he fish-ilk of piscine kind and mind, 

the belief that should one observe 

a phenomenon known as bubbles, 

(be that secular arcane or 

profound to astound religious) 

the aquatic consensus was that 

they only moved in one direction. 

 

Yes, but upward to where? 

To air is omen, 

to there rise, divine. 

Or so they would have us believe. 

What we fathom as such a fathom 

remains a depth of understanding 

that here the presence of gills precludes 

any need for breath o’ atmosphere. 

 

Why rise? 

What need to ascend at all? 

Yet there in that curdled chromosome spiral 

lies a mutant gene which denotes 

a quality of lung aspiration. 

Sown seed of aberrant need 

to arise and arrive at some blessed elation. 

There to perceive some cryptic concept of sky. 

This an aerial conjecture above and 

beyond our submerged comprehension. 

 

He was there and then he wasn’t. 

His sudden carnal absence a 

manifest moment of awe, 

whilst those of us left behind 

professed such disappearance 

as nothing less than   rapture. 

 

He was there and then he wasn’t. 

Yet then again,    he was. 

It was a phenomenon of which 

we came to know as “breaching”. 

To leap bodily out of existence, 

and then only a moment later, 

return with a splash back in. 

 

To “splash”? 

That… That is a concept 

I find difficult to define, though 

I’m told that once you’ve experienced it, 

   you absolutely know it. 

Indeed, those who have 

chance encountered it, 

find said sensation    exhilarating. 

Dare say, so soul addictive. 

 

Myself?     No. 

I would not    do that. 

For what is this life 

but my aquatic strife 

in roe-sown stupor stasis? 

This stagnant status quo 

the basis for staid sturgeon 

complacence. 

 

And whilst I tread water  ‘neath water, 

divine manna drops down heaven sent, 

from that scintillating surface above. 

 

Beneath a cover of celestial seraphim, 

here seduced I swim over to investigate, 

and there note upon its shimmering side 

an array of somewhat cryptic letters. 

That which reads to the effect of 

“ACME’s Finest Fishing Lure”. 

 

Bug or   bauble-bait    I bite. 

And there the breach. 

And there    the splash. 

Indeed, 

I was once there, 

that is… 

           ‘til I wasn’t. 

 

Ó2023 Jack David Hubbell

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

    Arboreality

They may have been lovers, 

but then, who’s to say? 

They in situ—  a besot situation.

Some ill-begot infatuation.  

 

The two of them lay upon the floor, 

just there, next to the front door. 

One spooning that of the other. 

And affection    affectation, 

and yet what is this lesson taught 

if not that such feral love be 

deemed by some god as scurrilous?

 

In Disney films, a 

squirrel meets a squirrel 

and there falls in love. 

In reality, each falls from a tree 

as result of my father’s shotgun. 

This an arboreality: 

ground-bound gravity 

gone grim gravitas. 

 

They say heaven lies 

in the sky above our heads, 

and if so, how much 

closer to that divine 

are those breaching crests 

of hallowed boughs and 

the squirrels which therein abide? 

Sacred?       No. 

 

There at our front door 

lies lead-laden proof that 

one can indeed fall from grace. 

A blessed gulf tumultuous. 

Yes, they which only a moment ago 

had as cherubim leapt aerial adept 

across a cathedral’s broad leafy arch. 

 

Words    fail us. 

And yet that need 

to    communicate. 

 

I, but a boy;   yet my father, 

   the didactic man, 

would here have me acquire an epiphany: 

yes, that every shiny coin turns copper 

upon one’s soon sunken eyes. 

That this life is naught 

but precursor to death. 

That you may clap hands all you want, 

but Tinker Bell’s spunk of spark is bunk. 

 

Rather, that there in the city 

some father might take his son 

to watch Bambi in the theatre, 

and there let loom 

a curdled comprehension 

that this fated fawn’s mother 

will not last ‘til the end of the film.

 

Those hunters… 

    Those hunters… 

Just what was it 

that they carried 

in their hands?

Some aspect of trauma. 

   Some aspect of death. 

Yet Disney spares us 

the sight of a somehow 

inanimate carcass. 

Yes, but my father? 

No.      

Not so much. 

 

These were formative years. 

My father attempting to make me a hunter. 

My mother’s devout desire that 

I there embrace her Christian faith. 

 

My father had a special board 

of which he’d use to 

field dress small game. 

And there the squirrel 

would be pinned by its paws. 

There its skin and fur 

delicately stripped away. 

There the gralloch process of 

removing bowels and heart. 

 

For this small boy, what 

remained upon that crimson board 

was less a squirrel and more   

that of a human form 

there deftly crucified. 

 

Off in the distance, a 

scurry of squirrels look down to see 

that one of their brethren has 

achieved a certain martyrdom. 

That later that night 

we will all partake 

of the body. 

 

Indeed, that of which we 

 

now decree 

 

quite divine. 

 

Ó 2023 Jack David Hubbell

LINCOLN, NE, USA

 

LINCOLN, NE, USA

 

LINCOLN, NE, USA

 

LINCOLN, NE, USA

 

LINCOLN, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA