Easter Morning, the Telluride Free Box<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She tested her alarm last night. It worked
and woke her up two hours before dawn.
(She doesn\u2019t shower, Easters, but keeps on
the sweat suit that she sleeps in.) Then she drove her
brand-new car (like her last two, a Land Rover)
to the Free Box\u2014it was still dark\u2014and parked
across the street. Assorted SUVs,
half-laden with the latest thing in skis,
soon pulled up. Easter was the final week
of the season. They left Italian gloves
and sweaters, Gortex\u00ae coats, and once-or-twice-
worn gear, which she displays in her boutique
without first having to inspect for lice.
More than anyone else, therefore, she loves
the Free Box Easter morning and is willing
to wake up before God, to the alarm.
The Mexicans and Natives show at eight,
nine, ten; for the best loot that\u2019s way too late,
on Easter. Her technique works like a charm.
And there\u2019ll be tourists leaving town all day
and stuffing it, so how can people say
someone who wakes up earlier is \u201charm-
ing\u201d anyone? This year she makes a killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alligator Sky<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw the alligator in the sky.
It roared a chilling silence.
Big sky. Big alligator. So you know I\u2019m talking Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, still before dawn, I saw its eyes. Eyes like a fly\u2019s,
a thousand little red lights over where I knew there\u2019d been
the slope of a hill, all of yesterday.
Sure, they were TV towers or something like that, but I was groggy,
so I saw the beady eyes of a celestial monster.
Haven\u2019t you done the same for want of caffeine?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then it yawned. I knew it did,
for in the used car lot adjacent to the motel where I was staying,
all the pennants flapped at once and stayed erect.
The American flag at the motel, too.
Had they not been attached they would have been sucked
over to what was yesterday a hillside,
this morning a celestial swamp, where the scaley thing skulked<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and then started swallowing the stars in the black sky,
stirring them up into his morning mouthwash.
One by one they went dim, but their light
oozed out of his leather-air hide to whiten the dark into day and there I saw\u2014
in the darkness that wasn\u2019t dark anymore
but just like the bright darkness of a lake\u2014
the ripples of his hide covering that whole section of sky.
Sure I knew they were altocumulus clouds,
but I say \u201calligator sky\u201d because
that morning they were an alligator.
Besides, what with the fierce breeze of its breath,
the Alligator of the Sky,
more real than the Man in the Moon,
trembled me with imagination
danger
and delight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Missoula, MT
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James B. Nicola is facilitator for the Hell’s Kitchen International Writers’ Round Table, which meets twice monthly at Manhattan’s Columbus Library: walk-ins are welcome. His children\u2019s musical Chimes: A Christmas Vaudeville premiered in Fairbanks, Alaska, with Santa Claus in attendance, opening night. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/todd-kent-Ip586GV8jb4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":484,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}