Craig Goodworth, Rope-Horse (found rope and steel), 2010
ANY MINUTE NOW
A gold and white embroidered man holds the symbol of his office,
a question mark telling others he was a shepherd and they were,
well, you know, his helpless dumb animals.
Michael and I went to see automated dinosaurs in the old Rex theater.
We found ankles in the sandbox, matched them to mammoths
and duckbills whose recorders roared for them, whether they did or not
in life, and were all grey, the color of the depth of our ignorance
where no light penetrates. We connected the past that weighed more
than Pensacola, teeth at the ocean, tip toes left, finding the cypress
and digesting its oils, snapping without a thought, rove beetles
and aphid lions who waited like tons through winter, white ash femurs
in shale that showed memory’s legs can be put back together imperfectly
with miserable conclusions drawn on walls of a dark abandoned theater,
small bones reattached with staples, the littlest believable bridges
to what has been left out without our knowing, and happening
again, all over, any minute now.
_______________________
Allan Peterson
Review by Jared Pearce
The metaphor for memory—rebuilding a skeleton—is nicely wrought here, especially when considering the image of the young boys digging through a museum exhibit intending to either entertain or instruct or inspire young minds, or all three together. In the end the minutest details need to be stitched, and the stitching itself is under scrutiny and, I think, some admiration, and then the whole rigamarole begins again: the mystery of how to weld today to yesterday is at once clearly connectable and filled with the suspicion that something, somewhere, is missing.