Imagination

Pied Crow is circling the million dollar slum known as Melrose Arch in search of food. A crumb from the bakery, perhaps – a morsel of meat from the restaurant. She sees me standing on the balcony and changes direction, swooping low directly towards me. A low caw and she veers off again, showering the blessings of wild intelligence from her wings. She says: I am with you. And that’s enough, as Monica Richards sings, for now.

The gate opens with a rattle of pebbles against metal. We’re home again after a day at the salt mines. The Yucca points its totally non-sha chi towards me, the lemon trees branches bear near to the ground with juicy fruit; the thug-of-a-rose swarms the wooden pagoda in complete, viscious-thorned abandon. Love wells up from the ground and from each and every green living thing. I am enclosed in warm rapture and a sense of being gently, continuously, abided with.

The black and white dogs yawn and stretch, tails thumping or helicopter-rotating as is each animal’s wont. Two muzzly faces are planted on the edge of the mattress, staring at me with adoring eyes. I reach out both hands and rub their furry lovingness.

And yes – I am imagining it all.

But I am also, then, imagining the starry constellations around the Earth.

I am imagining this broad tarmacked highway and every one of these roaring, belching vehicles upon it.

I am imagining the flat-bottomed grey clouds which hang like a presentiment of Armageddon above the Nedbank building, heralding snow, proclaiming wind, generating cold.

I am imagining the smell of roast coffee beans from the bistro downstairs, and the slant of sunlight upon the shopping precinct outside my window. Imaginal, too, are my snuffling, sickly colleagues fairly bravely coming in to work because somebody needs to do it now that we have lost about half our department.

And the twin flat screen monitors I look into as I type these words? Figments of my imagination as well.

Much gratitude to Christina for clarifying the issue so well.

Pic: found here