A Thing was set aside
and set aside, forgotten.

A Person saw the Thing left untended
took it,
lost it stealing away.

Someone found
the Thing, brushed off the dust,
and took it home.

Who values the Thing most?

He looks a thing of all odd angles.

Hung with mismatched scraps

Of old good clothes and crowned

With a thatch of blonde straw,

He stands in no way straight, in all ways still.

He waits

Without patience or lack thereof

Entire within himself.

Then, a moment of attention from outside

And he is touched with grace.

A glance

And he becomes

Magic’s creature, crackling with light and fierce beauty.

Both men exist

And both are real

And he is both.

while they played in old garages

singing chanties, singing dirges

cats from farms and cats from barges

calling stinginess and largess

It is not deep, although narrow paths and holes and halls of it riddle the ridge.

Instead, its claim to my regard, or yours, lies in its openness.

The limestone hill spreads wide and offers you itself in the person of one stone room

the size of a country church (unsteepled, plain, but rising high).

The neighbors dance there–square and buck–on the smooth uneven floor,

and take their rest on benches around rough walls, fanned by the cool breath of the earth

while they talk, admire and tap to tunes.

In the heat outside, grasshoppers and cicadas beat dry grass and the light bends the brush on the creekbank.  A fine view as any stained glass.

Foucation is less precise than the Silliness Quotient, which is an absolute value.
However, the SQ is a static measurement, while focation is an active process and accounts for one’s differing modes of behavior while among subsets of society.

The single pink flamingo
in my yard
is pride
is restraint
is a statement.
Punctuation.
Adornment.

Alone

Is any thing
so lonely
as a
single
pink
flamingo?

by the woman

to search for them.

If I found them, what she was really searching for would be clear.

She was a mother, dealing with a daughter.

These things that I was seeking,

a whisper of the holy grail,

the Ark of the Covenant,

buried civil war treasure.

Silver slivvers of meaning.

Words hidden beneath the surface of other words,

somewhere a buried waterfall of truth.

She had hired me to find

Magic.

If I found them, what she was really searching for would be clear.

She was a mother, dealing with a daughter.

These things that I was seeking, a whisper of the holy grail,

The Ark of the Covenant,

Buried Civil War treasure

Small silver words of meaning.

Words hidden beneath the surface of other words.

Somewhere a buried waterfall of truth.

She had hired me to find it

For a magic if held.

Don’t you think so?