This morning the foothills and mountains are combing the clouds for showers.

As the sun breaks through, the shadows cast superstitions in the lost dutchman's mind.

Pooping pidgeons and kids like wild peccaries circle the patio below my perch.

Like a plump rooster, shorn of feathers, the elusive Sasha floats by my window once again.

I search for his story, an expressive metaphor transformed from life,

something universal in human experience that connects us despite his silence:

before his school days, before masterbation, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Russian mothers against the war, before Mayakovsky's and Esenin's suicides,

before all Pushkin's children were plundered, poisoned, pilloried,

before Putin's puppets,

before the bone-crunching brutality of his youth, bullies before they were boys.

Ah, I have it! Let's open the Russian doll, one inside the other, inside the other…

let's grasp this rooster's leg, this Russian road runner tiptoeing by my door.

I'll bekon him in, bless him, bestow a kiss on his bald head, squeeze out a smile!

Jan. 2, 2009
Tucson, AZ