Ross White
__________

I Like Too Many Things



     to ever be satisfied with one. The giant squid and mountain lion
mesmerize me equally, as do other pairs: blackberry and watermelon,
puppies and kittens, underbrush and lichen, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson,
beer and White Russians, turkey and mutton, domestic and foreign,
polyester and cotton, dirty laundry and fresh linen, Incas and Mayans,
black holes and ions, sensory deprivation and cosmic vision.
I am a sort of griffin: head of a wanderer, heart of a dragon,
allegiance to neither. So my attention, battered, is often cloven,
and I, smitten with a new idea or fascinating button, appear a cretin.
But I am unruined. I speak a pidgin but listen closely to the origins
of the words: a smidgen of Asian, a smidgen of Briton,
laden with an unburdened appreciation of living. My written
communications have the same enlightened tone, if you’re bitten
with the same or similar affliction and others often listen
in bewilderment, as though it is in Latin, to what you consider common
sense. Otherwise, I beg your pardon. I could draw it for you in crayon.
There is a heaven. In it, all things are in pairs, or triplets, or sevens.