The Ballad of Thing and Idea - Tim Hunt

[Larry Robinson]

The Ballad of Thing and Idea

A Sort of song to the tune of Sting’s “If You Love Someone, Set Them Free” or perhaps Bob Lind’s “Elusive Butterfly”
1.
Grampa Bill had always said
No Ideas, but Thing couldn’t help it if his eye kept wandering
and wondering about the mysteries beyond things. Slouched at the bar,
wiping the beer foam from his upper lip,
he saw her gliding across the floor as if she never touched it—
the hem of her frilled hoop
skirt kissing the wood, slick silk polishing the oaken gleam. Thing
could not resist having ideas.
He fantasized that she
had feet. He knew it was wrong
to imagine her invisible wings, wrong
to lose himself in the prismatic play
of light and color about her form
as she dipped and modulated,
as if she were the music. As
Thing stood, the beer and her beauty
20

went to his head. He squared
his shoulders and wedged each foot
on the floor like a climber digging his
toes into a tiny fissure as he reached
to hammer in the next piton. He would
at least try to dance, try for the summit,
that horizonless dazzle.
Thing swallowed the last of his beer and set the bottle back on its dampened disc.
Giddy, he let go of the rounded
wooden ledge, his cotton shirt,
a ballooning jest, as if he were
a tumbling arc. He shook off
the fancy like a wet dog. Thing’s size 12 work boots walked him toward the light.
2.
When Thing asked Idea to dance, she of course said yes.
Why not she thought take a chance.
Perhaps they were fated for Romance. As they spun about the floor
She could tell that Thing had ideas
But he was just so real and
much too clumsy as he stepped
and stepped again on her dainty toes.
21

Sadly she knew Thing could never hold her, that she would trill away, always reaching for
things Thing could never be.
In the dance of is and ought
Thing was, she thought, simply naught.


      - Tim Hunt