The April Fools

The April Fools Later, when they had done with the business of hurting each other, the accusers would blame the stars with their incessant gossiping of immortal loves when gods had walked the earth. She was sitting by a moon lake, gathering lilacs, questioning moonbeams, teaching them how to laugh flirting with wind echoes. He was stumbling through the days composing poetry, balancing words on sounds constructing half forgotten moments into little stick houses, drunk with visions. It’s not as if they did not see this happening, could not see this happening. They could touch, see and hear, But so could the love witches, As stars are sometimes called, and what amulets can you use on stars. So they slipped into each other’s eyes and together they found hidden wants and familiar sorrows lost ages ago, when they were too brash to save things, and wore each other’s sorrow in new and different ways. And as if that were not enough, they built majestic shrines in their images, for early dawn worships before they had taken food or drink, like dedicated monks testing their vows with the days of devotion. And they lived in those old rented sighs as if they had owned them, gathering lilacs, chanting forevers, babbling of rainbows and fireflies Like April Fools. Mark Conte, copyright Cross Cultural Press, 1986