6/29/08: 'February Missouri Rain'
A prose poem by JIM FOX
Ahead of me and on my right, an arc began. Such a graceful, slow motion arc it was that I blinked twice to make sure my eyes saw what they first told me: I was present to witness a mail box on its post begin their fall, a 90 degree downward arc. The mail box and falling post, a 4X4 once sturdily upright, completed their 90 degree downward arc, an arc I watched through my windshield and the cold, wet, Missouri winter weather (Misery weather indeed as the locals say.) as I drove west on Highway 40. I wondered how many people had ever been present to witness a mail box on its post not tumble, not sway, not shudder and fall, but just slowly¸ ever so slowly, arc from upright into supine, to genuflect, like homage paid to saturated winter earth and gravity. My bumper in its horizontal movement forward just then pulled even with the mail box and its post as the mail box halted at the earth line, face down, still no shudder, no sway, just a soft settling into muddy misery.
