"Silly Scilla, silly Scilla 

asked a fairy for vanilla 

skipped da manners she was taught.... 

So empty cones is all she got!"

"Empty cones, empty cones!" 

Her ears took turns kissing her shoulders

tossing her hair with rhyming youth.

"Scilly scilla," the spring-time girl chanted

 plucking one of the delicate blue petal-ed bells from its stem,

 flipping it to catch an imaginary scoop of ice cream.

Bobby could not hear her song.  

He did, however, know the words. 

He read each word that crossed her lips.

 His own lips mouthed a mute plea

begging her to remain facing him 

so he could catch all her verse. 

Her tempo he marked by syllables

 that swan-dived one by one from her face

Bobby believed in things he could not see, 

because he could sense things that other people could not believe.

Bobby filtered his world through a self-schema fully accepting 

of phenomena beyond the radar of human senses.

 Spirituality was not just all around him.

 It swam in the synovial fluid of his joints 

where it treaded water in slow motion

reducing proprioception to a trance like reverie.

 Proprioceptive awareness that hummed like a florescent light bulb

throughout his biological circuitry.

Highlights in Bobby's hair brightened in the sun

blending with the yellow grass that sprayed waves across the hillside.

 As he watched the perfect girl in her perfect garden

he imagined himself

 undamaged before any disability

floating like an angelic astronaut. 

Gently drifting through an amniotic sea

to listen at the peep-hole of his mom's navel.

His fingers absently wiggled his loose baby tooth

 while he watched the girl he wanted to marry. 


His eyes followed the hem of her blue and yellow dress

as it waltzed across the golden landscape. 


The valley that separated him from his perfect girl

was so wide that no one else could see

 the glorious garden on the other side of the stream.

None of his neighbors knew it was there
because the valley extended beyond the range of normal sight.
 Like a balloon that ascends until it minimizes itself out of existence. 

To others, the garden was recognizable as only a purple smudge
 like from a smeared rainbow
 a grape jelly stain compromising the perfection 
of his illustrated backyard reality.

Here he would sit
 painting their future together 
on the canvas of his mind.

She was the only one he would love. 

Her garden was hidden out in plain sight 
by the limitations of human eyes that watered and blurred
 unable to stretch sight that far 
down the hillside.

Bobby, however, could see each colored petal of every flower. 
He noticed every contrasting detail
 bright and alive
against the warm backdrop of the country afternoon.

He watched the graceful gardener the little girl's lips called, "Mam." 
Mam was tending her planted pretties 
puttering around the busy child.

Bobby's nose allowed his diaphragm to extend itself completely
 snorting spring air in through his nostrils.

 His abdomen contracted 
as his mouth exhaled a sigh of impatient relief. 

He stood at the top of the bright slope.
 He pulled one arm by the wrist above the back of his head
then stretched the other in an exaggerated yawn. 

He was about to check out his fly and laces
when he stopped still with a strangled gasp
tilting his head like a listening dog.

Her voice !

He heard her voice between his ears!
 Recognized it even! 

But then no... 

The breeze is all he felt
making seashell sounds
 inside his head.

He shook his skull hard
 trying to lose the teasing perceptions. 

Sounds flickered like secret passwords
 meant to open steel 
vault doors inside his ears.