Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Rowing Boy







Rowing Boy had slept too long... months perhaps, under what had been a glorious golden blanket of October leaves. He woke with his skin chilled azure by the soft drifts that molded him, his perfect bronzed pecs, his belly on which you could play washboard for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band Reunion (featuring Maria Muldaur on vocals).



Oh, how Rowing Boy longed for the clean pull of his oars, the leap of the trembling shell forward, the wind in his eyes, the grunts of his sluggish opponents. But it was cold, Toronto-February cold, and he was clad only in his dashing shorts, tight as an Erotic Writing Contest Winner's dreams. He looked down, groggily, to inspect the gull that oddly did a fly-past of his ankles -- and it froze too. The two, stilled, caught a little more snow and became art. Meanwhile, all the automatons of the vast city beyond the harbour ran back and forth, forth and back, issuing and consuming preoccupied people, pneumatic doors sometimes catching on ice, but still shuttling, rocking, running.


The sun began to gild the westward rails, and even soften the angular, money-hungry high-rises. Still Rowing Boy had not gotten one good stroke in, one strong pull through the treacly water, dotted with tiny ice floes and the ghosts of seals. February was to be continued.

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