Synchronicity - Sandra Anfang

[Larry Robinson]


Synchronicity 	
							
We’re walking down the hill to the little pond 
that always reminds me of Mc Elligot's Pool. 
It’s dinky with a sprinkling of pre-teen boys 
dreaming on their fishing poles. 
Catch anything, I ask? though I know 
there’s not a single fish in their buckets. 
The turtles are out in force, lining a log 
like commuters waiting for the 6:40 bus. 
I start to tell you a story about the time 
my six-year-old appeared onstage with Bill Irwin.
How the great clown whispered to him
both of them in identical Harlequin suits 
standing inside an antique trunk
as if it were just an ordinary day at the circus.
You never stick to the storyline, you say,
you veer off on crazy tangents.
My professor calls those bird walks, I say. 
They’re prized in the storytelling community.
It’s a teensy lie, not the bird walks per se
but the part about storytellers liking them.
Then I crawl out on a narrow limb 
and tell you about the Nun’s Study 
how the sisters who wrote about their lives
in prosaic style developed early Alzheimer’s. 
My story elements are lined up in my mind
like those turtles on the log, only the line is more of a spiral 
like the roundabout on Western Avenue.
I finish the Bill Irwin story and circle back
to the black and white glossies of Bill in his clown suit
hanging on my bedroom wall, how I came to own them. 
It’s all serendipity, I say, and synchronicity
forgetting (again) the difference between them.
Is there a difference? 
If you’re patient, the story 
will come back to pick you up and walk you home, I say
like a good square dance caller, even
when the metaphorical bus is late.

	- Sandra Anfang

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