"Surfing" poem

Surfing With You

Surfing the waves with you
Ride them in - each one
But I don't want to come to shore yet
Instead,
I take the next blissful wave with you
We've got forever baby
Let's play in our ocean today

Grasshopper Jesus

Here's a story I recently wrote about a time in my life when I was eight or nine.

Grasshopper Jesus
Bill Branch

"What are you doing out there?" came the woman's voice from inside the house.

"Catching bugs." the boy replied softly.

"Speak up boy!"

The boy stood up and poked his head into the back door of the house. "I'm just catching bugs." he said, his voice still soft.

"Don't bring them in." she mumbled back. "And close the door, I don't want to cool off all of Arizona."

The boy obediently complied and shuffled back to the side of the house. As soon as he was out of sight of the back window, he slumped to the dirt where a mason jar was. He peered into the jar intently looking at something. The grasshoppers inside the jar, if they were able to make sense of what they saw, would have made out a freckled face with bleached sandy hair looking in at them. His hazel eyes distorted by the glass were empty - his face expressionless.

He had caught several grasshoppers minutes earlier in the tall grass of the yard. He spent his summer days there in the yard and already had a tan. Today he found relief from his intense boredom when a small swarm of insects made their way into his small kingdom. He plucked one of the small creatures out of the jar and considered it a moment. Its eyes were emerald green with perfect orb like symmetry. The boy could vaguely see his own reflection in its eyes. The grasshopper struggled vainly to pry his fingers off resulting in them tightening. A green ball of grass juice was produced from the depths of its mandibles which bled down the boys fingers.

"Yuck." he said slightly annoyed. He pulled a straight pin from out of his shirt pocket and with a single motion nailed the insect through its midsection and into the ground. The boy laid flat on his stomach and watched the grasshopper wiggle helplessly. The sun shone brightly off his white t-shirt. He could smell the earthiness of the dirt and the recently cut grass. As he gazed at the squirming hopper just a few inches from his face, his mind drifted back to a few months earlier.

It seemed to him a lifetime ago. He thought about the trailer his family lived in and the way it looked in the new lot. The sun was beginning to set and the home cast a long shadow across the dirt lot and into the road. His dad had moved his large family to the out-skirts of Apache Junction Arizona from Mesa which was just a few miles away. It was a new trailer park and a lot of people were moving in there that summer.

His dad had been rather subdued lately and didn't talk much anymore to the boy or his siblings. This move was met with hope. Maybe things would get better with this new life he had thought. Maybe his eight year old sister who was just a year younger than him would be allowed to live with them again.

Why she was gone was a mystery. Questions about why she was living with their aunt were always met with desperate hushes and half comforting words.

He stood in front of the trailer watching his dad set the house jacks.

"Can I help dad?" he asked.

"No, Bill. Why don't you see if your mother has anything for you to do." he replied without looking up from his work.

A group of boys were playing soccer in the empty lot across the street and were chasing after the ball.
"Wanna play" one of the boys said after Bill kicked it back.

Bill looked back at his father. His father, still sweating after adjusting the last trailer jack said, "Just come back when it gets dark."

Bill ran to the lot with his new friends, he had the distinct feeling that things were going to get much better.
The sound of a wasp pulled the boy in the yard back to the present. He ducked his head. When he looked up, he noted that several more grasshoppers had been pinned to the dirt.

He squinted, trying to remember when he had done this to the bugs. He watched as if witnessing a dream.
Two rows of grasshoppers were formed on the sun-baked dirt, each being skewered like the first. The first one was the largest, a plump guy that even now was grasping the shaft of the needle as if trying to extract it. It's legs were sliding uselessly along the needle which was wet with its own blood.

The boy didn't register this; his mind was already back at the trailer park. A white car had pulled up to the trailer soon followed by a police car. Bill ran home to see what was happening. He first noticed the look of worry on his mother's face. A man and woman wearing formal looking work clothes were talking with his parents. The officer stayed in the car where he seemed to be catching up on some paper work with a bored expression on his face.

"What's going on?" Bill asked his father.

"Go on and play son." His father replied. The serious tone in his voice sent Bill scurrying back to the soccer game.

He didn't like at all what was going on back at the house. He tried to take his mind off of it, tried to will it away. These people were not friends. He knew this from the intent sounds of their conversation. His father was snapping angry words at the couple. Their responses were calm - almost patronizing.

Bill decided to stay focused on the soccer ball as it made its way from foot to foot. He watched the perfect geometries on the ball turn into a blur as he kicked it. He looked up from the game when he heard his mother sobbing.

She was covering her face with her hands. Bill's father held her in his arms trying to comfort her. Bill could remember this moment clearly in his mind, at least the image of his mother. He had never seen her sob this way so freely.

It was strange how he could remember so much about that soccer ball but not what his father looked like that evening. His father seemed almost like a shadow, a wisp of a memory. He couldn't remember anything about him from this moment. It seemed strange to Bill how everything was so vividly burned into his brain like a snapshot in time yet the place his father stood was an empty spot. "What was that thing holding his mother, if not his father?", he thought.

The rest of the world from this moment on became surreal.

Back in the yard with the grasshoppers, he no longer wanted to think about it. His lips were tight, pulled back in a scowl, probably the first expression his face made in months. His fingers were ripping at the insects, pieces of wings, legs and antennae littered the ground. He had left the big one alone for now. Its movements were less desperate, its mandibles were all that was moving as if chewing on something. It seemed to look up at the boy as if for the first time seeing his tormentor. The boy wondered how clearly it could see him.

He tried to think of an earlier time when he could see his father more vividly. There were so many of them. He had been with him his whole life. He remembered the time when his dad was working on his motorcycle outside on the porch. He had fiery red hair and a round sweaty face that was smiling. He was a large man and Bill knew he was safe just being close to him. Bill remembered the taste of salt when he kissed his father's cheek goodnight every night and that his face felt like sandpaper in the evenings. He thought he could remember every question he asked his father and his father's patient replies. Bill could not conceive of a god but his father was all he needed. In his mind, his parents were gods.

Sometime in the last year, things changed. He remembered the arguments between his parents. His mother spent most the time sleeping while his father was at work. The house became littered with old laundry and dirty dishes. There was a new baby crying a lot and Bill liked to spend his time outside with his friends, even when his dad came home from work.

One night when watching television, he could hear muffled giggling on the bed in the living room. His dad and sister were under the blankets playing something secretive. Something about this made Bill very uneasy. He looked away to the shadows in the corner of the room. They seemed to be spreading into the rest of the house. He ran into his bedroom and turned on the light to read a good Hardy Boys mystery.
From that time on he couldn't remember anything about his father. His father became a shadow in his memory. So that when he looked back from the back seat of the white car that evening at his father and mother, he saw her look of grief as she clutched his baby brother, but he never saw his father who stood at her side.

He sat in that car with his other brother who was seven years old. His brother had tears in his eyes and was holding a blanket. They had both been told by the strangers that they didn't have a choice but to go with them. Bill tried to comfort his brother.

"We'll be back soon" he said. "It's probably only for a few days." His brother didn't respond, but just sat there quietly.

The car trip seemed to last an eternity. It was night and the two boys were being taken to a strange part of town. The homes were nicer here. The lights were warm and friendly. When they arrived at a house, his brother was asleep against the side door. He had a peaceful look on his face. Bill began to wake him, but the lady in the car stopped him and said he was to go elsewhere. Dutifully, Bill left the car and his brother and walked into his new home.

Here there were no goodnight kisses and questions were not tolerated. Bedtime was at eight and he could leave his room only at ten in the morning. His foster mother preferred that he was outside most the rest of the time. The backyard was as far from the prison he was allowed to stray. He had been told that he was not allowed to make friends, so the front yard was out of the question.
So there Bill was in the backyard where he had been all summer. He had just cut the head off the large grasshopper.

Bill observed the insect carnage. The needles poking out of the ground were now casting shadows. It was getting late and the sun was setting. A look of surprise crossed his face when he realized how much time had passed. He saw the grasshopper bodies as if for the first time and a look of horror crossed his face. He looked down at his sticky fingers. An antennae was still stuck to one of them twitching as if still alive. He frantically wiped his fingers on his pants. Then he covered his face with his hands and began to cry.

He had always loved insects. He was fascinated by them. In the past when he had held caterpillars and beetles, he did so with the utmost of care. They were creatures to be admired and respected. He didn't understand why he had now done this act of terror and brutality. So Bill sobbed and sobbed. It had been the first time he cried or showed any emotion since he was taken from his family.

His eyes were puffy and red from the crying and he realized he was crying for his own loss. He had been trying to take everything like a soldier, hold it all together. He realized for the first time, he would never see his family again together. He would never see his father lovingly embrace his mother as he had often done. He knew his mother was changed forever and his father was someone different. And so in that backyard among the insect carnage Bill grieved no longer for the crimes he committed against the grasshoppers. He grieved for himself and his lost family.

He saw that there are unknown forces in the world that will lay waste to the most precious things - forces that know not what they do for they are the acts of ignorance made manifest through minds of slumbering gods.

His eyes had been closed for some time now as he knelt by the dead grasshoppers. An evening breeze brushed passed his face cooling his warm wet cheeks and eyes. He opened his eyes and looked up at the first stars appearing in the night sky. The stars, like jewels thrown across a vast black tapestry, were twinkling with a growing brilliance as the darkness consumed everything else. He drew comfort from their silent defiance, their obliviousness to the immense darkness around them. He imagined himself as a star with some ancient furnace within forever casting light outward into an otherwise meaningless universe.

This thought rejuvenated him. If someone asked him at that moment what he was feeling, he could not have put it into words. He just knew that the fear and intense loneliness were gone and in its place a sense of complete peace. He imagined that the stars were in some way his new parents.

He pulled some soil from a nearby garden over the insects and patted the new grave sight down. He stood up, feeling the stiffness in his knees, took one last look up at the stars and walked into the house and into his new life.