Charlie Brown’s Body

He shows up, years later with a rabbi beard. What’s broken, Charlie, can’t be fixed. If it feels like your head is an ellipsis does that mean something’s been forgotten or it’s waiting to be filled? Love, curiosity, grief. Old friends, the football, it’s hard to imagine real dirt on this ground. How simple is the neighbourhood of feeling until it’s your neighbourhood. A comet over the doghouse turns out to be a plane but from where we’re standing, it’s still burning.  Charlie, bald head, sullen sage, you say our lives are cartoons to be puzzled over again and again. What are we equal to and what do we translate? Like Schrödinger’s Dog, the dog is always there but what about us? Sisyphus and Lucy kissing in a tree. The kite’s a twisted bird in the branches. Ancestors, Charlie. All these years. What’s the best thing about rhetorical questions?