Darlington's Fall

Half an Orphan The hand hungers: the jewel of the world, And his for the taking. In all his long Life of looking, never once beheld A thing so finenever wanted anything Quite so much as this astonishing Being, this stout green glittering Prize . . . But the getting his hands on it, The business of the capturing, Thatwill be dicey (difficult, delicate), With so many ways everything can go wrong . . . Hands are hungry and with hungry hands You must work extra hard to keep Your wits about you, to be slow and quick At once, as the situation demands. (When you're so full of wanting, it's no small trick.) Boil down all the trees in the forest until They form a single cup of resin, still You would never concoct a green So bright, so dark, so dizzyingly deep As this, the purest color he has ever seen. The jewel of the world: conceived In mud and muck, then dropped on a fallen log Down at the edge of the pond. He can't stop Even to remove his shoesno time Wades rights in, feet sucked at by the slime . . . The trouble here? It's that the frog (The hugest frog in all the world) can get away So many different ways, can simply drop Flop!and be gone, never to be retrieved. Oh, so many ways for things to go astray! He slides toward it, heart about to burst In his mouth, heart full in his hands.It must be Adream. . . that's what he'd thought at first, Spotting it: so big, so green, andright there. That was the amazing thing: the thing's reality. The wish formed instantly, deep as any prayer: Let me get my hands on him! Here's the prize He's waited all his life for: the overfull Eyes and barrel chest, the kingly receding skull, The bulging banked power in the thighs . . . A sliding stepa sliding stepand nearly Nearly there. Inside his chest, desire suspends A weight, a weight connected to a spring, His heart like a mousetrap, waiting To snap shut with an absolutely desolating Emptyclap. . . How will he bear it if the thing Escapes?oh, when he wants it so dearly, Never wanted anything so much! And almost there, now he can all but touch A hungry beggar's hand extends . . . He lunges, just as the frog leaps, And right there, in midair, in midair's where The two creatures (hands of the one, brute Miraculous torso of the other) lock Together, a solid thumpingshock That races up his arm like a flare, Crackles and cleanses and expands As it climbs, torching his brain. (And the fire keeps Burning: decades hence, when his fleet-foot Boyhood's dim, he'll recall, with tingling hands, The summer morning when his little hands Clamped on the creature and held it whole, Feeling in that moment so rich a press Of feeling, perhaps no other touch (Or maybe one?one only?the one to come Four decades on?) ever will thrill him quite so much. Oh, every cell in his body understands What he himself cannot begin to guess: This instant lasts forever, there are some Encounters that configure your soul.) The thing squirms squirms half loose, slips, But his fingers grapple: one leg,gotit, one Big back leg grasped tight, as his other hand, scooping Upward, catches it from below, grips It round the chest: the booming noble pulse Yes in his palm: he has it, it's now his great good luck To have it: the jewel of the worldand where else But in the warm chalice of his hands? A whooping Howl rips free of his throat, winging like a duck Over the trees, straight at the sun. . . . Quite a specimen himselfLeithauser, Brad is the author of 'Darlington's Fall' with ISBN 9780375411489 and ISBN 0375411488.