American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 73
Surely, This Poem is a Symbol
Andrey Shamshurin
The man sits on a patch of grass near the road and watches a blue
heron doze off in a shallow pond, littered with wood crags, the bird’s
legs half-drowned in the mud, its long neck drooping down and jerking
up, eyes closed. Surely, he thinks, it must be a symbol, but he cannot
tell what it is. Like the bird, the man is tired. He unslings his tie and
throws it overhand at the water. The wind whips the checkered fabric
back, and it lashes his forehead, which is surely a symbol for the
inevitability of human suffering, or, he considers, for the suffering of
foreheads by ties.
He knows there is deeper meaning in the tie and the bird, below which
a crowd of frogs now gathers. The frogs jump up to the bird’s tail
feathers, a perfect ring of shivering green skins diving down and hurling
up, the bird jerking its wings after every jump, then arching its back and
freezing still in the cold water filled with frogs—who could be a symbol
for courage, he thinks, until the bird gains consciousness and plucks a
frog mid leap, gulps down the still quivering legs, closes its eyes, and
falls asleep.
Perhaps the bird is a symbol for the savagery of love, but then what
about the wedding cake slumped on the road behind him, a tire
mark wedged in between. Surely, the bird and the cake cannot both
symbolize the split of a relationship. Especially since the Volvo to his
left leans into the bark with its caved in bumper, cracked hood, and
shattered glass beneath the smoke.
And the heron, awake and devouring another frog, could now be a
symbol for God, or the Devil, or maybe a bird. But what about the
woman sprawled in the passenger seat, not moving. Perhaps she is a
casualty of passion, which has been drained like the empty beer cans
littering the backseat, while the unopened one rests in the man’s
fingers, symbolizing anything at all as he opens and chugs it down. And
the bird, its belly full and its body worn, dips its head into the muddy
water, gurgles out a thick layer of froth, and drowns.
American River Review
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